


let me discover all of your colors (if you love me let me know);

by mevies



Category: Descendants (2015), Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, but imma post it all at once, i am weak for mal as peter i really am, literally a bit of almost every character, more stuff in the notesss, this is the to all the boys i've loved before au, was meant to be posted as an one-shot but i wrote literally 42k words so i divided it in 4 parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 17:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16022654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mevies/pseuds/mevies
Summary: Evie writes a letter when she has a crush so intense she doesn’t know what else to do. Re-reading her letters remind her how powerful her emotions can be, how all-consuming. Some would say she's being dramatic, but Evie happens to think drama can be fun.Just as long as no one else knows about it.or, the to all the boys i've loved before au but it's malvie.





	1. Part 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So I wrote this entire thing in like a week, and I really don't know how many times I've watched the movie to get this story done. But it's here. I based a lot of it on the actual movie and its dialogue, and also some of the things I remembered from the first book & also some of the things I thought of myself to give it my own twist. I really hope you guys like it. The characterizations of Mal and Evie in this are fairly different from what I've written before, if I do say so myself, and I'm kind of really excited about it. I just hope I somehow managed to not ruin it/still keep some of their key personality traits in. 
> 
> I based my Mal strongly in Noah Centineo's Peter, which means that Mal definitely says "whoa, whoa, whoa" in this a few times. Evie and Dizzy are adopted by Belle and Adam in this, and I couldn't figure out a last name for Ben's family so I just literally used "King", because I'm crafty and creative. And Mal's last name is actually Maleficent's last name, according to a few websites I've checked. CJ isn't exactly Harry's little sister in this, I've given myself the permission to make her his cousin so the story could work.
> 
> This story was originally meant to be posted as an one-shot, but I have no self control or awareness and ended up writing 42k words, and there was no way I could post it as an one-shot because no one wants that. So I divided it all in four parts and I'm just gonna post them all at once because I can.
> 
> Title is from Alien by Sabrina Carpenter. And also, if you pay close attention, you'll notice she also makes a cameo in this. Kind of. Sort of. You're welcome.
> 
> Also, again, I'd like to say a huge thanks to my great amazing wonderful talented friend @cabooseachievables, who helped me by offering me moral support and heard all of my ideas and helped me build this whole AU. You're the best and I literally wouldn't have finished this if it weren't for your help. Like, for real.
> 
> I think that's all? If I think of anything else I'll add here later. I hope you guys like this! I don't own anything.

_ The forbidden kiss. We knew that it was wrong, that he was betrothed to my sister. But if this wasn’t what he wanted, then why did he come to the field of desire? It was fated, that we should meet like th- _

Evie’s reading is interrupted by a pillow hitting her square on her face and her book falls closed on her bed. She snaps her head up in the direction of where the pillow had come from, and she frowns when she sees her younger sister, Dizzy, standing at the door, another pillow ready to be thrown in case the first one didn’t do its job, an expectant look on her face.

“Are we hanging out or what?” She asks.

Evie sits up, grabs her book from where it’d fallen and says, “I just want to finish this chapter.” 

As she thumbs through the book pages to find where she’d left off and Dizzy sighs, there’s a clang from downstairs in the kitchen, and Ben appears in the doorway and stops just beside Dizzy, shaking his head as they hear their father exclaim something from downstairs. Evie meets his eyes.

“Should we go down and help him?” She asks.

“You know he wanted to do it himself,” Ben says, “But please come down and help me set the table?”

Dizzy sighs and throws the pillow she’d been holding down and begins to follow him out. Evie begins to put her book away as she listens to her siblings talking as they linger on the top of the stairs, waiting for Evie to join them so they could make their way down together.

“I hate when Dad makes dinner by himself, it always tastes like butt.” Dizzy complains, and Evie chuckles under her breath.

“Regardless, whatever Dad puts in front of you, you take a bite and say it’s good, okay? Just like mom trained us,” Ben responds, and Evie can hear the smile on his face as he says this.

Ben was her older brother. He hadn’t always been, but it’s been so long that she doesn’t really remember that small detail anymore. Well, not always.

You see, she was adopted by the Kings when she was just turning four years old. Before them, she remembers a small window of time – maybe one week? Maybe two. Three tops. – in which she’d lived in a foster home where the other kids couldn’t really understand her because she was still trying to grasp their language and sometimes her accent would come on too strong. And before that, she remembers her mother.  A little. Bits and pieces of the woman that had brought her to this whole new country in hopes of building a better future for both of them, but had given her up for adoption when things had gotten hard. She guesses she can understand where her mother came from now that the years had gone by and Evie knew better, but it still hurts sometimes. That she hadn’t persevered - hadn’t kept her.

Evie doesn’t remember a lot from that time. She doesn’t remember a lot of her mother. It hurts, sometimes, but her family made up for it that those moments don’t last too long. Ben had warmed up to her almost instantly, making a lot of effort and trying his best to understand Evie and communicate with her and help her with whatever she needed. She remembers liking Ben almost instantly. And Belle and Adam were the best parents any child could ask for – so loving, so caring and so welcoming. So welcoming, that a few years after bringing Evie home, they’d brought Dizzy.

Dizzy was their younger sister. She had been a little older than Evie had been when Belle had heard about her at work – as a lawyer that worked with child protection services, she would sometimes come across children that were put in foster care. It would take all in Belle not to come home with all of them, but much like Evie, the woman couldn’t really leave without Dizzy, and at the end of the second week after meeting the young girl, she and Adam had driven to the foster home she’d been put in and had returned home with a new child to look after.

The three siblings were inseparable. They looked after each other, and they cared and protected each other and were there for the other no matter what – always a trio. And Evie knows she and Dizzy would miss Ben terribly once he went away for college the following day.

As if reading her thoughts, Ben speaks up from his place beside Dizzy on top of the stairs, “Evie, you alive in there?”

Evie gets up from her bed and tries not to trip on the pillow Dizzy had thrown on her floor as she makes her way out of the room, “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Got distracted.”

Ben smiles and shakes his head, “You and your books.”

“Oh my – do you smell that?” Dizzy speaks up from the middle of the staircase, making Ben and Evie pause behind her, “Is that…  _ burned _ mashed potatoes I smell?”

“You’re gonna eat those burned mashed potatoes and love it,” Ben says, putting both of his hands on Dizzy’s shoulders and pushing her gently so they can all walk down. Dizzy sighs and walks down the stairs, and Ben follows behind. Evie trails off behind them, a small smile on her face as she watches them interact, when there’s a knock on the door and Ben moves to open it.

Evie stops just at the bottom of the stairs and leans on the wall as Ben opens the door and reveals a grinning Audrey, his girlfriend and their neighbor, from behind it.

“Hi, babe. I’m not too late, am I?” She asks as she leans up to meet his lips in a kiss, and Evie looks away just before she can actually see them kiss, an uncomfortable feeling on her chest as always. Dizzy doesn’t seem to notice her discomfort; in fact, she’s grinning at Audrey when the older girl steps into the house and greets her with a side hug and a smile.

Evie’s discomfort leaves just as quickly, though, when Audrey turns to her once Ben and Dizzy walk into the kitchen to get the things to set the table and smiles widely, “Hi, Evie.”

“Hi, Audrey.” Evie grins, meeting her friend in a hug.

“Oh, I love that shirt. Is it new?” Audrey asks, grabbing Evie’s hand in hers and moving it away from her body so she can get a better look. Evie holds her breath for a small fraction of time to try and regulate her heart in reaction to the contact and nods, licking her lips before answering.

“Yeah, I got it last week. Thanks.”

Audrey smiles, “That color is perfect on you.”

Evie fights her blush and smiles more softly, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Audrey winks, and then, “So, should we go join them?”

Evie nods, and allows herself to be pulled by the hands towards the dining room area, where Ben’s setting the tables while Dizzy follow behind him to set the glasses, both in easy conversation with Belle, who’s silently telling them that if they behave and do as told she’ll let them order a pizza once Adam goes to bed.

Evie laughs when Dizzy cheers.

//

“So, how’s everyone liking the food?” Adam asks once they’re all sat and the food is served, and they subtly share looks with each other as if to silently decide who would be the one to praise it this time around. Ben sighs when he notices all eyes – including Belle’s – on him.

“It’s great, dad. Really liked what you did with the mashed potatoes. Not a lot of people would’ve thought of it.” Ben says, his tone warm and light as always, and Adam smiles.

“Not a lot of people  _ can _ burn mashed potatoes.” Dizzy says under her breath, and Evie gives her younger sister a warning look.

“What was that, sweetie?” Adam speaks from his place across the table, and the younger girl shakes her head.

“It was nothing, dad. Just agreeing with Ben.”

Adam smiles brightly, “I’m glad you liked it, sweetheart. You haven’t been eating much.”

“Just trying to make this moment last.” Dizzy says with a grin, and her siblings and mother chuckle at her way of managing to keep the old man happy, even if by being sarcastic. Adam, bless his heart, doesn’t think anything of it and his smile stays in place.

They start easy conversation then, and before they know it, they turn the topic on Ben’s impending leave the following day.

“Have you checked if you packed everything, sweetie?” Belle asks him, and Ben nods.

“Twice. I’m all set.”

“I can’t believe we’re not going to see you until Thanksgiving.” Dizzy says, her tone a little sad. Ben gives her a small smile.

“Actually, until Christmas,” He says softly, and Evie and Dizzy look up at him at that, “Scotland’s too far to come back for Thanksgiving and then come back on December. It makes more sense to wait and spend winter break here with you guys.”

Evie nods, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Dizzy pouts, “Doesn’t mean we won’t still miss you, though.”

“And I’ll miss you guys,” Ben says quickly, his smile turning a little sad, and the siblings share a look that’s only interrupted by their father.

“And, on a brighter note – Evie, with Ben away, you get to drive the car  _ and _ practice your driving all at the same time.”

Evie sighs and Dizzy groans, “I forgot I had to drive with Evie now.”

“Feel free to take the bus.” Evie rebuts, sugary sweet, and before Dizzy can say anything, Audrey speaks up for the first time in a few minutes.

“I could give you guys a ride,” She shrugs, a small smile on her face as she meets eyes with Evie, “I’m not disappearing. I’m right next door.”

Evie smiles, and before she can answer, Dizzy speaks up, “ _ Or  _ I could drive, and if we get pulled over, we’ll switch places real quick.”

Evie rolls her eyes while the rest of the family chuckles, and Adam says, “That’s great thinking, honey.”

Dizzy grins brightly at him and Belle shakes her head at them, “Leave your sister alone, it’s not her fault she’s such a terrible driver.”

Evie widens her eyes while the others laugh, “ _ Mom _ !”

“What, honey? I’m just being honest,” She winks, “Besides, your father is right. With Ben leaving the car here you can use it to practice driving and get better at it. Prove us wrong.”

“You guys suck.” Evie blushes when she notices Audrey looking at her with an amused smile on her face, and she turns her attention back to her absolutely inedible mashed potatoes.

They finish dinner then, and Belle and Adam recruit Dizzy to the kitchen to help them with the dishes while Evie runs back to her bedroom to finally get to finish her book. She doesn’t get to, though, because as soon as she gets in her room she hears the sound of Audrey and Ben’s voices from outside her window, signaling that they were probably sitting on the lounging chairs on the front porch, just under Evie’s bedroom window. She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, really, but it sounds like Audrey’s upset so Evie just… allows herself to stand a little too close to her open window to try and make out any actual words.

And, well. Evie guesses she should explain what the deal with Audrey is. Audrey and Ben have been together for the past two years, but before Ben even thought about her like that, Audrey was Evie’s first girlfriend. Well – girl friend. A girl who was a friend.

Evie and Audrey understood each other and could relate and talk to each other about anything and everything. They both had similar interests and passions – fashion being the biggest one. They could spend countless hours talking about clothes, and movies, and artists and celebrities they liked – and they used to do that, all the time.

They didn’t exactly stop being friends once Audrey and Ben got together, it was just… different. For multiple reasons.

One of them was because now Ben was with them all the time, and the two of them didn’t really hang out just the two of them anymore. And it’s not like Evie even thought about talking to either of them about it, because Audrey always seemed so happy when Ben was around and vice-versa, that she just didn’t want to be the one ruining it with her own problems. And they tried to include Evie in everything and not make her feel left out – going so far as inviting her everywhere. Even when they were on dates.

And then comes in another of those multiple reasons.

Evie was kind of in love with Audrey, a little bit. A lot bit.  _ Well. _ It’s complicated. But it’s there, and it kind of makes Evie want to die when she thinks about how awful of a sister she is. She doesn’t want to steal Audrey from Ben, not at all – they’re both happy, and Evie is happy for them. For Ben. He’s a great guy, and Audrey’s a great girl, and they’re good for each other. But Audrey’s also Evie’s first love since realizing she was, you know,  _ really _ not interested in boys, and kind of the reason why Evie even figured out she had no interest in them at all in the first place, so.

So it meant something for Evie.

So Evie wrote her a letter. She didn’t plan on sending her the letter or anything, it was just for her, to help her understand how and what she was feeling. Just a way to let it all out or, you know, to fantasize a little about how it would’ve been like if she’d realized how she felt about her sooner.

Evie steps away from the window and walks towards her closet, and after turning on the lights of the walk-in space, her eyes zero in on the small, baby blue box that sat on top of one of her highest shelves – a place she deemed safe enough to keep something so personal to her.

Her letters were her most secret possessions. There are five total:

  1.    Lonnie from camp;
  2.    Mal from seventh grade;
  3.    Carlos from homecoming;
  4.    Jenny from Model UN;
  5.    And… Audrey.



Evie writes a letter when she has a crush so intense she doesn’t know what else to do. Re-reading her letters remind her how powerful her emotions can be, how all-consuming. Some would say she's being dramatic, but Evie happens to think drama can be fun.

Just as long as no one else knows about it.

//

“Hey, can I come in?” Ben asks later that night, knocking twice on the open door of Evie’s room with the hand that wasn’t holding an empty cardboard box.

“Sure,” Evie nods, turning off the lights of her closet with one last look towards her high shelf and closes the door behind her. She watches as Ben sets the empty box down and walks towards her bed, crawling on top of her bed and burying his face on her pillow as he says, his voice muffled, “Your room’s a mess.”

“I know. Haven’t had the time to clean it.” Evie says, following after him and moving to sit beside him.

“Excuses,” He says, before sighing and turning around so he can lie on his back, staring at the ceiling of his sister’s room with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Are you okay?” Evie asks him softly, and Ben nods quickly – too quickly.

“Yeah.” A pause, and his face falls a little, “Well, I don’t know, actually… I broke up with Audrey.”

“You did  _ what _ ?” Evie asks, her eyebrows raised, “Why?”

“It’s complicated,” Ben sighs, his eyes trained on the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on his sister’s ceiling, “I just… I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

“Why?” Evie repeats her question.

“Because it was. See, I’m going to be in a whole different country, literally across the ocean. And she’ll be here,” Ben starts, “And you know, you guys are starting junior year and I’ll be on my first year of college. It makes a difference, and it’s going to be long distance – it’s just a lot of signs that I can’t ignore. She should be enjoying her last years of high school, not hung up on some guy that went away for college in another country.”

“But you’re not some guy.”

Ben gives her a sad smile, “Maybe, maybe not. But the situation’s the same, and I care too much about her to lose her because our long distance relationship didn’t work. And I don’t want her to miss out on the fun she should be having here because she’s with me, and I’m not even like, present, you know? Does that make sense to you?” His eyes find hers, and Evie thinks for a moment before she nods.

“Yeah, it does.” She agrees, “But… you love her, right?”

“I do. And that’s exactly why I’m doing this.”

They’re in silence for a moment before Evie speaks up again, “Do you think you might change your mind?”

Ben sighs again, and Evie watches as he sits up and brings his hands together on his lap as he shakes his head, “No. I can’t change my mind about this.”

He seems determined, and Evie figures that he had a good reasoning for doing what he did. She can see where he’s coming from, and she respects him greatly for taking that decision. Admires him for it.

Ben’s always been selfless – always cared more for others’ well-being than his own. Always made sure that everyone was happy and content before even worrying about himself. He’s the guy that will always offer to help, even if he doesn’t know how to - he always finds a way. And Evie understands then that this was Ben’s way of saving Audrey and himself of the heartbreak if they stayed together and grown apart because of the distance.

“So, when I was packing for college, I had dad make a box of things to take to Goodwill,” Ben begins to say, clearly wanting to change the subject. Evie waits, “I got you that box so you can do it too.”

Evie looks around her room for a moment before she turns back to Ben, who has an expectant look on his face, as if he already knows what she’s about to say.

“I don’t think I there’s anything I can part with at the moment.” She says finally. Ben shakes his head and gives her an amused smile.

“You’re just too lazy to look through all your things – seriously, Evie, this room’s a  _ mess _ .”

“It’s an organized mess. I know where everything is.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben nods, not believing her. He looks around the room again and stops just towards her desk chair, “I shouldn’t be able to know you own a lacy red bra, but here we are.”

Evie gasps, “Stop looking!”

“Stop showing me! Clean your room!” Ben laughs back, and Evie glares at him for a moment before it dissolves into laughter.

They chuckle together for a moment before Evie leans her head on Ben’s shoulder and sighs, “Are you gonna be okay?”

Ben wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer to him, “I always manage, don’t I?”

Evie smiles at him and he kisses her forehead.

//

Ben had been her first best friend.

She remembers being five years old and being introduced to this new family of people that she didn’t know, and being introduced to this whole new world that she hadn’t interacted with before – Ben was always so welcoming, from the very first second to this very one, as they stand on the gates just a few minutes before Ben absolutely had to get on the plane.

Ben was always by her side, no matter what. Her best friend, her rock – he’d sit with her during lunch at school, he’d drive her places, share things with her. He’d even gone so far as learning how to speak fluently in Spanish, because he knew that Evie missed talking in her own language and because he wanted to share that with her – he wanted to give her that one thing. And Evie would miss him so very much.

They’ve been hugging for a few minutes now, and they’re only half conscious that their parents and Dizzy had walked away to give them some space to properly say goodbye to each other.

Evie hadn’t gone a day without Ben since being brought home all those years ago, and she doesn’t really know how everything’s going to be now that he’s going to be an ocean away from her. Ben seems to know what she’s feeling, because when he finally pulls away from her, he grabs her hands in his and sways them back and forth between their bodies.

“Are you gonna be okay?” He asks softly.

Evie gives him a sad smile, “Did you have to pick the furthest college you could think of?”

Ben chuckles, “You’re going to be fine. Dare I say, I think this might even be good for you.”

When Evie beings to shake her head no, he continues, “No, seriously. This is an opportunity for you to branch out, make new friends. Make new experiences without having your older brother as your shadow.”

“But I like having you as my shadow.” Evie says, her voice dangerously close to breaking, and Ben gives her a soft smile and pulls her into another hug, Evie sniffles and rests her head on his chest, “I’m gonna miss you.”

“I’m gonna miss you too, every day.” He says, “But if you need me, I’m only a Skype call away. Or a text message, if it’s not too urgent.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.” Ben nods, and he smiles brightly when Evie nods once and pulls away from him, wiping the tears that managed to escape with her hands as she smiles back.

The rest of their family chooses that moment to approach them again, Adam carrying a few magazines on his hands and looking like he’s trying really hard to fight his own tears. Belle gives Ben a watery smile as Adam says, “We didn’t know which one you’d like best, so we just got you all of them.”

“There’s one about finances on it that sounds really boring so it might help you sleep,” Dizzy adds helpfully, and Ben chuckles as Adam nods, as if they had come to that conclusion together.

Ben accepts the magazines with a smile, and Adam looks at him in silence for a moment. Evie counts to three in her head, and just as she expected, when she gets on three, her father pulls Ben into a hug just as he begins to tear up. The three women chuckle at the endearing image before them of Ben trying to comfort his dad with soft taps on his back. Ben meets Dizzy’s eyes from over their father’s shoulder and motions for her to join in, and she grins and complies, quickly followed by their mother and Evie.

They stand in that group hug for a moment before Ben finally speaks up, “Okay, I gotta go now.”

They pull away from him and Ben gives them one last smile as he grabs the strap of his messenger bag with his free hand and takes a deep breath before he turns around and walks towards the security zone, pulling his passport and his boarding pass from his jacket’s pocket.

Evie feels arms around her and she looks to her right to see her father pulling her to his body at the same time as he pulls Belle, who’s pulling Dizzy in, and she rests the back of her head on her father’s chest as the four of them watch Ben walk away.

Evie takes a deep breath, and just before Ben’s completely out of their view, he turns around and gives them one last smile before disappearing.

“Well, there goes one.” Adam sighs, and Belle hums. “My eyes are burning.”

“You can cry, dad.” Evie says, not looking away from the spot where Ben had disappeared to, and she hears her mother and Dizzy chuckling softly. Her father makes a sound with his throat before answering.

“Good, ‘cause I already am.”

Evie joins her sister and her mother then, and she wraps her arms around her father from the side as they begin to turn and walk away.

They’re in silence for a moment, just enjoying each other’s company before Dizzy speaks up, “Can we stop at McDonald’s on the way home?”

Adam’s voice still heavy with emotion when he answers, “Great idea as always, sweetheart.”

Dizzy smiles brightly, and then, “And can we have a dog now?”

“No,” Belle answers before Adam could, knowing that her husband would give their daughters just about anything they asked for at that moment. “But nice try.”

//

That night, after coming home from McDonald’s and then a movie with her family, Evie walks into her room and the first thing she sees is the empty box that Ben had left there the prior night.

With a sigh and a look around her room, she decides she’ll start by her closet.

//

That following Monday morning finds Evie and Dizzy standing before their dad, small boards with Grade 11 and Grade 6 in their hands respectively, Dizzy grinning widely in a way only an eleven year old would when asked to pose for a camera, and Evie with a more held back smile, only barely showing her teeth. Adam smiles softly at the picture once it’s taken, and Evie turns to Dizzy.

“You ready to go?”

“One sec.” Dizzy says, handing Evie her board and running back towards the house. Evie sighs before she hands both boards to her father.

“Okay, now I have to go.” Adam says, lingering almost nervously as he continues, “Drive safe. Have a good day. You look great.”

Evie thinks her father is worried about her very first day of school without Ben, and if she’s completely honest, so is she. But she thinks her father worries too much, especially about things that he can’t really change, so she tries her best on giving him the best smile she could possibly muster to try and ease his concerns a little, “Thanks. You too, dad.”

“I’ll see you later, okay? Call me if you need anything. I love you.”

“Okay dad. I love you too.”

Evie watches as her father turns and walks towards his car, and the moment he closes the door of the driver’s seat is the moment that she hears Dizzy running back, and she turns around only to roll her eyes once she notices the light blue helmet on her hands.

“That’s very funny.” She deadpans.

“Very necessary.” Dizzy responds seriously, putting on the helmet and adjusting it on her head.

Evie sighs.

//

Evie hadn’t really seen or talked to Audrey since Ben had broken up with her two nights ago, and when she sees the other girl by her locker almost as soon as she gets to school, she doesn’t really know how she should act. How does one act around your brother’s ex-girlfriend who just so happens to be one of your best and closest friends? Evie doesn’t know. Would Audrey even want to talk to her?

So, as she passes by Audrey, she tries a tentative smile and a wave when she sees that Audrey’s noticed her, and she’s more than relieved when Audrey gives her a small smile and a wave in response.

So relieved, really, that she doesn’t really see where she’s going or who’s behind her until her body completely slams against something – or some _ one _ . 

“Ow!” Someone exclaims, a female someone, and Evie winces internally when she recognizes the voice.

“Oh my God, CJ, I’m sorry.”

“Watch where you’re going.” CJ says, tone bordering on aggressive as she turns to look at Evie.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” Evie says, her tone as light as ever, and CJ rolls her eyes.

“Clearly.”

So. One thing you should know about CJ. Evie and her used to be friends once upon a time. Evie’s not exactly sure what exactly had caused them to part ways post middle-school, maybe it was CJ’s popularity and Evie’s lack thereof or maybe it was  _ something else _ , but now, well – any traces of friendliness between the two girls were left in the past, and Evie doesn’t really see it making a comeback anytime soon.

“Cute boots,” CJ comments after a quick glance at Evie’s outfit, “Thank you so much for your service.”

Evie raises an eyebrow, “They’re designer, not that you’d know anything about it.”

“And they’re amazing,” Says a voice from behind her, and Evie turns with a smile as Harry approaches them with a small smirk on his face and wraps his arm around his friend’s shoulder, “Not everybody can pull them off, but Evie can rock ‘em.”

Evie smiles at him and they both turn to look at a scowling CJ. Harry does a quick once over and continues, “But for ye, cousin, well… let’s just say it’s probably a good thing yer playing it safe with those uh… Uggs. Not all of us Hooks can live on the edgier side.”

Evie chuckles and CJ rolls her eyes.

Harry Hook is CJ’s cousin, and Evie’s best friend outside of her siblings. And as of the last two years, her only friend, really. CJ had been the one to introduce them to each other way back when, and they used to be friends – all three of them. But then, when CJ and Evie had grown apart because of CJ’s increase in popularity and her new crowd, Harry and Evie had grown closer and Harry had somewhat distanced himself from his cousin. They still loved each other because they were family, after all, but Harry’s disdain for the popular crowd and for his cousin’s seemingly new – and completely different – personality had drawn a strain in their relationship, causing the boy to find great joy in pushing his cousin’s buttons, and it was even better that he got to do so at the same time as he could build up his best friend’s confidence and image as he did so.

Evie thought it was childish, and sometimes she chided him for it, saying that he shouldn’t be picking sides, but he’d only shrug and tell her that it’s not like CJ is very fond of him, either. Not anymore, at least.

Family drama was always difficult to understand, Evie guesses.

“You know what, Harry? Screw you, because you know my feet are always cold and excuse me for not being brave enough to look like a fucking gothic raccoon on the first day of junior year,” CJ snaps back, and Harry laughs, thoroughly pleased that he’s managed to get under his cousin’s skin with just one comment.

“Yer right, it takes me a lot of bravery to look this good,” Harry nods, motioning to his eyeliner covered eyes and entirely black outfit. Evie studies it for a second. Harry has an incredibly edgy and amazing sense of style – Evie absolutely loves it. He doesn’t shy away from trying new things, and he’s not above painting his nails to complete a look if the outfit asks for it – in fact, his nails are currently painted black to compliment the eyeliner around his eyes and the black of his t-shirt, jacket and pants. Not to mention the boots he has on, that are almost a perfect match to Evie’s.

The brunette chuckles amusedly when she notices it, and he winks at her. CJ rolls her eyes in response and just as she opens her mouth, a platinum blonde girl appears from behind her and wraps her arms around her, stopping her before she could say anything to her cousin, “Hey babe.”

“Oh!” CJ says, a smile appearing on her face as she leans against Mal’s body, “Hi.”

“How you doing?”

“I’m good, how are you?” CJ’s tone is so completely different now that it causes Harry and Evie to roll their eyes together in reaction. They don’t seem to notice it.

“Good.” Mal responds, and they both finally look back at the other two in front of them.

_ Mal Bertha Faery _ . The second non-recipient of one of Evie’s love letters. The same Mal.

CJ’s Mal.

_ Seventh grade _ . Evie’s first real party – the ones that boys were allowed in and the parents weren’t around the entire time. The kind of parties that you’d find kids sitting around in a circle and spinning a bottle.  _ Those _ kind of parties.

Everyone in that room had known that CJ wanted to kiss Mal. And everyone in that room knew that Mal wouldn’t be opposed to kissing CJ back. Evie had offered to spin the bottle again, because CJ was still her friend at the time. But Mal had shrugged and given her a half smile and said,  _ “You can’t cheat the bottle.” _

And remember how Evie said that maybe there was something else besides CJ’s popularity that had made them, you know, not be friends anymore? Yeah. It was probably the fact that Mal and Evie were each other’s first kiss, and that CJ had been only twenty centimeters away from them when it happened.

The brunette snaps her attention back to the couple before her when CJ speaks up again, “So, I was just complimenting Evie on her government-issued boots.”

Evie and Harry share a look at that, and Evie misses it when Mal gives her a once over.

“Come on, I see someone we need to say hi to. Bye!” Evie and Harry turn their attention back to them at the sound of CJ’s voice to see her breaking apart from Mal’s hold and beginning to walk away without really waiting for Mal to follow after her, as if assuming that the blonde would just do so.

“What…” Mal trails off quietly, watching her girlfriend walk away, and she turns to the two of them after a second, “She just started this new diet and I think she’s just in withdrawal or something like that.”

Evie thinks Mal looks almost apologetic, and for what she’s not really sure. It’s not like this was anything new – this banter between CJ and Evie (and, well, Harry). It was routine.

“Are you sure she just doesn’t have a chemical imbalance?” Evie asks, raising an eyebrow, and she hears Harry chuckling softly beside her. Mal pauses for a second, and Evie thinks she’s deciding on whether she wants to defend her girlfriend or just walk away. She seems to settle on the last option, though, as she mutters a quiet “right” and begins to turn to follow after her girlfriend. If Evie hadn’t been paying attention, she would’ve missed the way Mal’s eyes went towards her boots for a split second before she gave them a nod and began to walk away.

Evie and Harry watch her for a moment before Evie looks down at her boots, “Do you really think my boots are amazing?”

Harry looks down at them, “Yeah, I wasn’t lying. Ye look cool.”

Evie grins, “I do?”

The boy rolls his eyes before he pulls Evie closer to him as they begin to walk down the hall towards their lockers, “Don’t ask, it ruins the whole vibe. Just be cool.”

“Okay, you’re right.” She wraps her arm around his waist.

“Anyway, do ye really think I’d let my cousin talk trash about ye?”

“What a gentleman.” Evie teases, and Harry winks at her.

“I have my moments.” And then, “By the way, do I really look like a gothic raccoon?”

Evie laughs before she says, “Kind of, but like… a hot one.”

Harry’s silent for a moment before he nods, “Okay. I can work with that.”

//

Harry escapes school during lunch time to grab something from Subway – one of his addictions -, forcing Evie to go find somewhere to sit in the hopefully empty Library, not really in the mood to face the crowded cafeteria by herself.

It figures that the Library wouldn’t be empty, though, and Evie’s kind of surprised by that – it’s not like this  _ isn’t  _ the first day of school or there’s any exams coming up – but a quick look through the room and she realizes that most people that were here apparently had the same idea as her, or were just happy to have somewhere quiet to nap before the next period. Evie sighs and walks towards the corner of the Library where she can see there’s a relatively empty table with just one person sitting by it. On further inspection, she holds her breath when she realizes just who it is.

Before she could turn around and walk away, Audrey’s eyes find hers and Evie decides to just get through with it.

“Hi,” She greets softly, and Audrey gives her half a smile, “This seat taken?”

Audrey looks at the multiple seats around her with an almost amused expression on her face, “All free. Take your pick.”

Evie smiles and picks a seat that’s across from Audrey, and they share small smiles before Audrey sighs, “I gotta ask… did he tell you he was gonna do it?”

Evie bites her lip and avoids Audrey’s eyes, a little uncomfortable with the question, and Audrey seems to notice it, “I’m sorry, I just – I know you guys talk about everything, right? So… I just thought I’d ask.”

Evie’s silent for a moment before she shakes her head and finds Audrey’s eyes again, “He didn’t tell me about this until after he did it.”

Audrey nodded and looked down at the table, picking at the corners of her notebook for a second before she looked at Evie again, “We’re still friends, right?” She asks, almost uncertain, “We can still talk and like, hang out, right?”

Evie gives her a nod and a smile, and she notices that Audrey seems relieved at that. It makes her happy.

“Yes, we’re cool,” She confirms, as if deciding Audrey also needed a verbal confirmation, when really, it was more for her own personal need than the other girl’s.

Audrey smiles back, “Good.”

“Good.” Evie repeats, and then, “Do you want a cookie? Mom made them.”

Audrey nods, “Yeah, I’d love one.”

Evie slips one out of the bag her mother had put her cookies in and handed one to her, and she smiles when Audrey instantly grins, knowing that her mother’s chocolate chip cookies were one of Audrey’s favorite sweets ever.

And as the minutes go by and Audrey and Evie share Evie’s mom’s cookies with each other as they talk about whatever they could think of at that moment that didn’t make either of them think about Ben, Evie decides that they really are good, and however she felt about Audrey didn’t matter.

She would never do that to Ben.

//

“The school cafeteria is so ginormous,” Dizzy says to her as they make their way to Ben’s – now Evie’s – car after school, “Alison wanted to sit next to me at lunch, but so did Brianna and Katy. So I ended up rotating so everyone had time to sit next to me, you know?”

Evie thinks back to how she spent her lunch time, and all of her other lunch times before that since she was a kid and –

“Yeah, I can totally relate.” She lies.

They get in the car, and Evie throws her bag on the backseat before she puts on her seatbelt, and she sighs when she sees Dizzy grabbing her helmet from where she’d left it on the floor of the passenger seat and replacing it with her bag. Evie watches as Dizzy puts the helmet on and adjusts it slightly before she speaks up.

“Really?”

Dizzy eyes her as if she should know better, “Of course.”

The brunette rolls her eyes and starts the car, and she only barely manages to stop the car before it hit someone. Someone that she would’ve seen coming if she had remembered to check the mirrors beforehand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She hears from outside, and Dizzy gasps. Evie’s holding her breath when she checks the rearview mirror and her eyes widen when they meet Mal’s as she leans down and looks through the backdoor window to try and see just who had almost ran her over.

Evie closes her eyes and exhales as Mal begins to make her way around the car towards her window, and Dizzy begins to laugh almost hysterically from the passenger seat.

“Good thing I’m wearing my helmet!” She exclaims, completely amused, and Evie rests her forehead on the steering wheel, completely and utterly humiliated.  _ This  _ is why Ben shouldn’t have left. Because she will kill people with her driving. While she’s not even  _ actually _ driving.

Evie’s forehead is still pressed against the steering wheel when there’s a knock on the window beside her, and she sits up straight and looks to her right to find Mal standing there expectantly. She takes a deep breath and presses down the button to open her windows, and for a while the only sound around them is the sound of the glass sliding down.

Mal leans down and rests one arm on the car, an almost amused expression on her face as she says, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Evie responds almost instantly, wanting nothing more than to just disappear.

“How you doing?”

“Good.”

“Yeah?” Mal’s voice betrays how amused she really is, now, and Evie feels the blush wanting to make itself known on her face.

“Yeah.”

Mal pauses for a second, and Evie doesn’t need to look at her to know that she’s about to be teased. She’s right, of course, and the next words out of Mal’s mouth in that same amused tone confirm it, “You know, people usually check behind them before they reverse to avoid killing others. It’s a random thing we do.”

Evie’s absolutely sure that she’s red when she says, “Yeah, I’m just not completely comfortable with using my mirrors yet, so…” Her eyes meet Mal for a fraction of second before she looks away and to the same spot in front of her again, but it’s enough to catch the glint in Mal’s eyes and make her want to die even more.

“Yeah, clearly.” Mal says, and Evie refuses to meet her eyes, “You think you’re gonna be able to make it out of the parking lot, or…?”

“Yeah!” Evie responds all too quickly, betraying how unsure she actually is of that, and she finally allows her eyes to find Mal’s then, regretting it instantly when she sees the amused smirk on Mal’s full lips or the way that her green eyes are shining in mirth at her reaction, “We’re fine, really. Seriously.”

Mal nods, and the way she doesn’t cast her eyes away from Evie or the way that her expression doesn’t change make Evie so nervous that she continues, her voice dying out and trailing off at every new word until she’s just hushing the words out, “Um, so you just… Go, seriously.”

“Sure, whatever you say, King.” Mal shrugs, but she doesn’t move just yet. Instead, she looks inside the car and towards Dizzy and directs her next words to her younger sister, who’d been strangely quiet throughout this interaction, “Hey, you’re in charge.”

Dizzy grins in response and Evie sends a quick glance her way to find the younger girl raising her eyebrows to her in response, and before Evie knows it, Mal’s walking away. Evie doesn’t look away from her steering wheel as she quietly presses the button to slide the window up again, all too aware of Dizzy’s eyes on her, and they’re quiet inside the car for a moment before Dizzy speaks up, “Who was  _ that _ ?”

Evie doesn’t meet her eyes when she responds, “That was Mal Faery.”

Dizzy nods once, and they sit back on the car seats for a moment before Dizzy looks at her expectantly, “What are we waiting for?”

“We’re waiting for the rest of the cars to leave.” Evie responds quietly.

Evie doesn’t need to look at Dizzy to know that her sigh is accompanied by an eye roll before she says, “Oh, my gosh.”

//

“What do you think Ben’s doing tonight?” Evie asks Dizzy that Saturday night while they’re both watching Golden Girls, Evie lying on her side on the couch and Dizzy on her back, her arms crossed under her head in support as she watches the show quietly.

Their parents were out on some important business dinner and the house was quiet save by the sounds of the television and Evie and Dizzy’s quiet laughter at the show from time to time.

Dizzy responds almost immediately, “Crack.”

Evie sits up, a frown on her face, “Dizzy, why would you say that?” 

Dizzy doesn’t move from her position as she answers, “It’s how Scottish people say fun. Harry told me.”

“Did you look it up to make sure he wasn’t just messing with you?”

“Duh.”

Evie nods and lies back on her prior position.

“It’s weird not having Ben here, huh?” She asks.

Dizzy moves then, sitting up halfway and holding her position with her elbows as she looks at her sister, “It’s weird not having Audrey here, too. I miss her Blanche impression.”

Evie gives her a half, sad smile that Dizzy returns before she lies back on her prior position just in time for another punchline. They laugh together for a moment before Dizzy moves to sit again, and Evie moves from her position to look at her more easily.

“You know, Evie, if you had a girlfriend that could drive, then maybe you wouldn’t have to drive at all ‘cause she would take us places.” She finishes happily, grinning at her sister, completely satisfied with her reasoning and Evie raises an eyebrow.

“If that’s what it takes, I think you’re stuck with me.” Evie responds, and Dizzy makes a face.

“I dunno.” Dizzy sing-sung, “What about that girl you almost killed the other day?”

Evie chuckled and shook her head, amused by her sister’s insistence, “She’s dating CJ.”

“So?” When Evie gives her a look, Dizzy sighs and her expression turns more serious, “It’s not just that.”

Evie frowns, confused, and Dizzy makes a turn on the couch so her head is by Evie’s when she begins, talking slowly and carefully as if not to hurt her sister’s feelings, “Don’t you find it kinda depressing that it’s Saturday night, and you’re having a Golden Girls marathon with your little sister?”

Evie shakes her head before she responds, “No. I love the Golden Girls, and I love hanging out with you.”

She moves a little so she can look at Dizzy when the younger girl smiles in response to that, and they both lay their heads on the throw pillows as Dizzy speaks again, her tone still gentle and slow, “Okay, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, but, Evie… I’m eleven and I cancelled plans to be here tonight. And, well, you’re sixteen, and I don’t think you had anything else going on, am I right?”

Well.  _ Ouch. _

“That’s way harsh, Dizzy.”

Dizzy gives her an apologetic smile, “The truth hurts, Genevieve.”

“Don’t you full name me,  _ Daisy _ .”

Dizzy chuckles and holds up her pinky finger, “I won’t if you won’t.”

“Deal.” Evie nods, twisting her own around her little sister’s and they focus their attention on the television again.

Evie allows her mind to drift off and consider Dizzy’s words for a moment as they sit in silence – the younger girl wasn’t wrong. She really didn’t have anything else going on that night, hadn’t even considered any other plans. She couldn’t even see herself not being anywhere else but here in this moment. She frowns. Was that really depressing? Should she be worried about that?

Did she  _ want  _ to be somewhere else? Did she need the option? Better yet – is she absolutely sure that she would’ve chosen to stay at home had she been given one? She thinks she would, because this is home. She feels comfortable here. It was safe. So she doesn’t think she would’ve chosen to go out if she’d been given the choice to, but then again, this was only hypothetical, and no one was expecting her to.

Evie barely notices it when she falls asleep.

//

“So, what’d ye do last night?” Harry asks her while they jog, considerably behind as the rest of their P.E. class was way ahead of them and they were only barely keeping a steady rhythm as they tried to have an actual conversation while they were running their laps.

“I finished another book. It might be my favorite one yet.” Evie responds and Harry chuckles.

“Ye go through those so fast; do ye even understand what yer reading?”

“Yeah, of course. Also, weren’t you the one to finish five books in one week and then pass out in middle of History class last year for lack of sleeping?”

Harry waves her off, “That was another Harry Hook.”

Evie laughs along with him and tries to regulate her breathing so she doesn’t pass out from her exertion. Talking and jogging? Not exactly a good match, but it’s never really stopped them before. Harry’s about to continue their conversation when a voice interrupts them, and Evie and Harry turn around, not pausing their jog, to find Mal beginning to jog to keep up with them.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” Mal asks Evie, and she frowns.

“Um, me?”

Mal nods, gives her one of those half-amused, half-teasing smirks she’d given her about a week ago, and says, “Yeah.”

“Hey, Bertha, I heard my cousin dumped ye over the weekend for a college student, that right?” Harry asks, his voice a little tired because of the physical activity but still strong enough that they could hear the teasing tone in his voice as he directed his attention to the platinum blonde jogging beside them in light jeans and a black t-shirt.

Mal gives a humorless laugh as she begins to slow down, and Harry and Evie automatically slow down with her as Mal says, “Heard you got shot down by Uma again, that right?”

Harry gives her a grin, “She’ll come around.”

“You’re awfully confident for someone who got shot down by the same girl at least twenty times in only a month.”

“Not confident, blindly optimistic,” Harry corrects, raising his pointer finger at her, and Evie shakes her head and smiles in amusement at her best friend, “Besides, if yer not really informed on yer best friend’s love life as I suspect ye aren’t by yer ignorant assumption, I’ll have ye know this is a special thing between us both.”

“Uh-huh.” Mal nods, and her eyes betray how amused she actually is by Harry’s antics. The boy gives her a grin, and Mal shakes her head before she looks from him to Evie and then at him again, “I need to talk to Evie. Alone,” she adds when Harry doesn’t move.

Evie scratches the back of her neck as she watches Harry study them for a second before he nods, “Okay.”

And then, as he begins to walk away backwards, not really caring that this is P.E. and that he’s not really supposed to leave the field, he turns his attention to Evie, “If ye need me, I’ll be by the pool watching the swim practice, courting my future wife.”

Mal shakes her head at him and Evie chuckles, nodding at him and watching him begin to run out before the teacher could catch him slipping away from his class.

“I’m mad that Uma’s probably actually going to end up marrying him.” Mal mutters as she looks after his retreating form and Evie smiles. Mal turns to her then, and clears her throat, “Um, look, I just wanted to say that I really… I appreciate it, but it’s never gonna happen.”

Evie blinks. When Mal doesn’t elaborate, she asks, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Okay, from what I remember of that kiss… I mean, it was hot, you know, for being in seventh grade,” Mal begins to elaborate, and Evie finds her confusion growing bigger by the second, “And look, I think it’s really cool that you think my eyes have like, a special glint or something like that, but…”

_ A special glint? When did she… Oh, no. _

_ Oh, no. _

_ Oh, no. Oh, no. _

Evie feels her heart stopping and her blood freezing up as she glances down at Mal’s hand and finds the  _ last _ thing she would ever want to find in the girl’s hand.

The letter. Letter number two. The letter that was supposed to be inside her blue box, on top of her highest shelf, inside her closet, in her room, blocks away from here. _ That _ letter. A letter that was not, and was never, not  _ ever,  _ supposed to be read by someone else that wasn’t her. Especially not by the person that it was addressed to.

Evie barely notices that Mal’s still talking as her heart begins to beat really fast against her chest and her blood begins to pump in her ears and her breathing speeds up and memories of seventh grade and first parties and first kisses and a glaring CJ begin to run through her head and before her very eyes, and Evie’s not really surprised – unconsciously relieved, even – when the ground rises up to meet her and she blacks out.

-

_ “Evie.” _

_ “Evie, wake up.” _

_ “Hello? Can I get some help over here?” _

_ “Evie?” _

_ “Wake up!” _

_ - _

Evie snaps her eyes open, and the first thing she sees once her eyes adjust to the light again is Mal’s face hovering over hers, a concerned frown on her face, “Are you okay?”

“What happened?” Evie asks, a frown of her own making its way on her face, and she realizes that she’s lying down on the track field.

“You… fainted.”

Oh. Right. Yeah.

“Okay.” Evie closes her eyes again and takes a deep breath. Just another moment to add to her apparently new collection of mortifying moments lived in front of the blonde.

“Here, gimme your hand,” Mal says after a second, and Evie feels her hand being taken and her arm moved, “And the other one, too.”

Both her hands are being held by Mal’s warm hands, now, and Evie still hasn’t opened her eyes, “Come on, you got this. Here we go,” Mal beings to pull, and Evie sighs and moves so she’s at least sitting up. She feels the beginning of a headache make itself known on her head and she groans softly, “And you’re up.”

Evie rubs the back of her head softly, knowing a bump would form there from where she hit the ground – but thankful that there was no sign of blood anywhere, and Mal watches her in concern for a moment.

“Hey, are you okay? Do you need me to call someone? Get you some water?”

Evie finally opens her eyes, then, and she tries her best to give Mal a reassuring smile, “No, thanks. I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

Evie doesn’t really have the chance to answer, though, because just as she looks up, she notices Audrey making her way towards the field, holding…  _ was that…? _ – Oh. Yup.

The fifth letter.

“Oh, my God.” Evie says under her breath, feeling her heart drop, and that’s the same moment that Audrey meets her eyes. The look in her face makes her want to pass out again, “Oh, my God.” She exclaims a little louder, and she barely notices Mal looking around them confusedly, trying to pinpoint exactly what could’ve gotten Evie so upset, and Evie doesn’t give her too much time to do so.

The same moment Mal opens her mouth to ask her what was going on is the moment that Evie grabs her head with both hands and pushes her so she’s lying on her back with Evie hovering over her, and Mal barely gets a question out of her mouth before Evie’s mouth is forcibly covering hers.

They don’t really realize what they’re doing and what position they’re in until they part ways only a few seconds later after an angry call of “hey!” from their teacher is heard from the sidelines of the track field as he glares down at them.

Evie looks up from her position hovering over Mal, and she meets her P.E. teacher’s eyes as he berates them, “Stop that! Two more laps for you, King!”

The brunette then looks back down at Mal, who has a confused frown on her face as she looks up at her, her right arm sprawled out on the field as her left hovers in the air, and Evie doesn’t really plan on staying to explain what had just happened.

Before Mal knows it, Evie’s standing up quickly, throwing in a “thank you!” before she begins to run away. She barely manages to not bump into Audrey as she runs past her, and she doesn’t really slow down until she’s safe inside the girl’s bathroom, way across the school campus.

She walks into one of the cubicles and holds both hands to either wall and takes a deep breath, trying to regulate her breathing, her heart, and her blood circulation all at the same time. Her headache is full blown, now, and she thinks that she might as well stay here by herself where no one else can see her for the rest of the day until she has to go home.

But, of course, as today’s events hadn’t been humiliating enough already, Evie hears the bathroom door opening again, and then, “Hey, Evie, you in there?”

This isn’t exactly one of the voices she’d been expecting to hear – as in, this was a masculine voice and not Audrey’s or Mal’s -, so she answers, “No.”

Instead of a verbal answer, the answer she’s given is an envelope being slid from the gap at the bottom of the cubicle, and she groans quietly.

_ Carlos. _ The third letter.

The only boy Evie had ever had any sort of... feelings for. Back when she was still trying to figure herself out and the possibility that she could still harbor feelings for a guy was still something that she considered. That she expected, so to speak.

Carlos. From Homecoming. Who’d smiled at her and danced with her and kept her company all night. Who’d complimented her outfit and smiled brightly and Evie had…  _ hoped _ . For what, she doesn’t know. Maybe some sort of realization, or sign that she wasn’t… you know.  _ Different. _

But that had been then, and it’d been when she wasn’t comfortable with herself – with who she was. That had been before she’d been comfortable in her own skin, in her identity – don’t get her wrong, her first two letters ( _ Lonnie from camp, Mal from seventh grade _ ) kind of made her aware that she was at least a little  _ different _ . But it wasn’t until Carlos that she’d started to realize how  _ different _ she really was, only to be completely sure of it by the time the fifth letter rolled around.

She’d tried. She really did.

But it’d figure that the only guy she’d ever have any semblance of romantic feelings towards was a gay guy. 

“Look, I didn’t mean to barge in on you. I just saw you run in here and I wanted to make sure you’re okay, and, uh… thought you might want that back. It seemed a little personal.”

Evie glances down at the paper in her hands and sighs, “Carlos, I hope you know that I wrote this years ago.”

“Freshman homecoming, right?” Carlos asks, his tone light and warm, and Evie sighs again before she opens the door and steps out of the cubicle. Carlos steps towards her with a friendly smile, “I had a lot of fun that night, too. But I feel like I should tell you, though… You know I’m gay, right?”

Evie chuckles, “Yeah. I do.”

“Okay, just checking. Um… no offense or anything, like I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but…” He adjusts the straps of his bag over his shoulder once before he continues, “I thought you were…”

“A lesbian?” Evie offers when he trails off, uncertain, and Carlos nods. Evie chuckles again, “Yeah. I am.”

“Oh, so was this one of those moments?” Carlos asks, nodding towards the letter on Evie’s hand. The brunette nods and bites her lip, a little embarrassed. “Hey, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It happens to all of us.”

Evie gives him a thankful smile, and he smiles back at her. Then, he seems to remember something, “I mean, I’m gay, but I still definitely shouldn’t be hanging in the girls’ bathroom like that.”

Evie laughs and watches as he begins to walk out. He pauses just before he opens the door though, and turns to her with a concerned look on his face, “By the way, are you alright? Should I take you to the nurse's office or something? You look kinda sick.”

Evie gives him a weak smile, “I’m okay. Thanks, though.”

“Alright,” Carlos nods before giving her a smile, “See ya.”

“Bye.”

Evie watches the door close behind him, and she sighs for what felt like the 100 th time in one hour. Well, at least that one was over with.

_ Now, _ she thinks with a gulp and a pang in her heart,  _ she had to figure out what the hell is going on. _

//

Evie rushes up the stairs once she gets home, barely even noticing her father talking to her once he sees his daughters walking in from school, and she throws her school bag carelessly on the floor and all but slams her hand against the light switch in her closet, her eyes widening and her heart stopping once she glances up at the shelf her box was supposed to be on and doesn’t see anything there. She frantically searches around her room, then, trying to locate the box, and she feels the anxiety start to creep in the more her frantic searching comes up empty. Downstairs, she hears her father sparking up a conversation with Dizzy and decides to stop her useless search in her room and walks out of her room, practically sprinting down the stairs and getting the attention of her father.

“Dad, have you seen a blue box? It’s round, has fabric on top, there’s a bow on it.” She asks, tone frantic and anxious, her breathing fast paced, and Adam pauses his mixing on a bowl and raises an eyebrow at her.

“Oh, wow. No  _ ‘hi, dad’ _ , no  _ ‘why are you home early?’,  _ oh, maybe because I decided to use my powers as the boss of a successful publishing company that’s just released yet another best seller and send everyone home early to celebrate –“

“I really need to know where it is. It was my mother’s. It’s very important!” Evie interrupts him, not really in the mood to deal with his usual playfulness at the moment, and he seems to realize this is actually serious.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” He says, “Have you looked in the mess in your room?”

When Evie nods, he thinks for a second, “Um, do you think it might’ve gone with the Goodwill boxes?” He suggests softly, almost afraid of what Evie’s reaction would be. Evie actually loses her breath at that, and she tries to rummage through her mind to see if she can remember putting the box in the box Ben had left in her room.

_ No, _ she concludes after a minute,  _ she hadn’t even taken the box out of her closet. _

In fact, she hadn’t taken anything out of her closet that day. She remembers  _ that _ . Her closet is the only thing in her room that’s actually somewhat organized, and she hadn’t felt the need to take anything from there, sticking with the items in her actual room. The Goodwill box had been filled mainly with books and random objects that Evie didn’t really feel the need to keep anymore.

There was no way the box ended up in there.

_ Right? _

Adam seems to find that Evie looks calmer, then, and he motions towards something on the other side of the counter, “Hey, you got some mail while you were at school.”

“What?” Evie mutters, more to herself than to him, and Adam watches as Evie walks towards the counter and picks up the small brown envelope with stamps that  _ definitely  _ weren’t supposed to be there and with her own handwriting. “Oh, no.”

Adam and Dizzy watch Evie walk up the stairs with the envelope in her hands, an expression that was nearing absolute panic on her face, and Adam frowns and looks at Dizzy, “What’s her problem?”

Dizzy seems to be going through her own personal issues when she shrugs half-heartedly and answers, “Maybe she’s on her period or something.”

“Ah.” Adam nods.

Dizzy winces when Evie’s door slams closed upstairs.

//

Okay.

So the letters are out. They’re out. There’s nothing Evie could do about it.

Good news: Carlos gave her his letter back. Everything worked out with that one. It was okay.

More good news: Lonnie’s letter was addressed to camp, and they were currently in Evie’s hands, safe and sound. So at least Lonnie will never find out how hard Evie had been crushing on her when they were eleven and sharing a bunker for a whole summer. That was okay. It was okay. Evie could count her out.

Now, onto the worse news: Audrey had her letter. Mal had hers. And who the hell knew where her letter to Jenny even was at this point? Certainly not Evie. She bites her lip hard enough to draw blood, and she hisses.

“God damn it,” she mutters, cursing herself for ever even writing those in the first place. What if Audrey read it? She probably did. She probably read it all, and now she knew that Evie had feelings for her.

_ Had. _ Past tense. Because she was Ben’s… whatever, now, and she wouldn’t do that to her brother.

Evie throws herself on her bed and closes her eyes, and suddenly she can just hear her own writing in her ears, can imagine Audrey reading them out loud and –

_ “Shut up!”  _ She shoots up in bed, walking towards her window and groaning when she sees no one else but the last person she wants to see, and the very person that had been haunting her thoughts just a few seconds ago walking towards her front porch.

There’s a moment of silence while the doorbell rings, and Evie jumps up when she hears Dizzy’s voice from behind her, “What are you doing?”

Evie turns to look at her and gives her a nervous laugh, “Um, nothing.”

Dizzy looks at her like she doesn’t believe her, and before the younger girl could question her any further, their dad’s voice calls from downstairs, “Evie, Audrey’s here!”

It takes Evie about one second to make a decision. She slides her curtains open and opens her window before she turns to Dizzy and says, “You never saw me.”

She grabs her bag from the floor and turns to her window, and she feels her younger sister’s disbelieving eyes on her as she makes a run for it through her window.

_ Not her best or proudest moment, _ Evie thinks as she gracelessly rolls from the front porch’s roof and ends up falling on the front lawn,  _ but at least she’s alive. _

_ Barely,  _ she adds, once she stands and feels a sting on her leg from where she knows she would find a huge bruise later,  _ just barely. _


	2. Part 2.

Evie makes the familiar route towards the corner cafe a few blocks away from her home, pedaling her trusty baby blue bike slowly as to not injure herself any more than she already had that day, and she finds that the familiarity of leaning her bike against the wall on the side of the cafe like she’d done many times before and walking into the homely and familiar place she frequented for years for as long as she could remember are enough to calm her down significantly – well, barely. She’s still a bundle of nerves, honestly.

The woman at the counter, a petite woman with a kind face that always smiles at her when she sees her readily sets to prepare Evie’s usual order as soon as Evie walks in – which consisted of a huge glass of cherry cola and fries. 

It doesn’t take long for her order to be set in front of her on the counter, and Evie rips the paper covering a straw maybe too aggressively and all but shoves it inside the glass, wanting nothing more than to begin to feel comforted by the familiarity of her drink.

It doesn’t work, though, because as soon as the liquid is making its way to her lips through the straw, she hears, “Hey, King.”

Frowning and turning her head, she almost chokes on her drink – and the straw -, when she finds Mal looking at her as she sits on the stool a few steps away from her, her arms on the counter as she watches Evie.

Before Evie could fully process what was going on, Joan, the waitress that was always nice to Evie, steps out from the kitchen and takes in the scene before her with a curious, kind smile, “Oh… Anything for your friend?”

Evie shakes her head, “She’s not with me.”

“I’d like a strawberry shake,” Mal speaks up, and when the older woman nods and gives her a smile, she says, “Thanks.”

“I’ll be right back.” The older woman says and steps back in the kitchen, and Evie fiddles with her hands nervously as she tries not to look at Mal. She fails, though, and chances a quick glance to the blonde to find her looking around the place curiously, as if she’d never been here before.

“So, what you doing here?” She asks, curious, nervously. Evie thinks Mal notices it.

“What do you mean? I’m just here to take down one of those strawberry shakes.” Mal says easily, as if that’s the only reason why. Evie doesn’t believe her for one second.

“Cool,” She says anyway.

It doesn’t take Mal any longer to fess up, “Actually, I stopped at your house and your sister said you’d probably be here.”

Evie pauses.  _ Dizzy. _ Of course. She sighs internally as Mal turns her body to her fully on the stool and continues, “Look, I just wanna be like, super clear.”

“Okay.” Evie says, almost dreading where this conversation would go. She really isn’t emotionally equipped to deal with all of the things that had been thrown her way today.  _ And it’s not even 5PM! _

“I’m flattered, I am, but…” Mal takes a deep breath, “CJ and I  _ just _ broke up, so…”

Evie frowns, “Are you trying to reject me right now?”

“Well, yeah, ‘cause it didn’t really seem like it took back the first time.” Mal’s statement ends up sounding more like a question, as if she was still confused by what’d happened at the track field earlier that day – and Evie doesn’t blame her, really.

“Mal Faery, I’m not trying to date you.” Evie says, tries to make it clear. Mal licks her lips, and Evie waits for her to understand. Mal apparently doesn’t.

“Okay, but your mouth is saying something, but then your mouth said something completely different.”

Evie blinks.

“What?”

Before Mal could elaborate, Joan returns with her milk-shake and Mal nods at her and offers her a small smile as she thanks her. Joan gives Mal a smile and then she turns to wink at Evie, and the brunette frowns. Now what was _ that _ about?

Mal seems to not catch that interaction as she takes a sip through her straw.

“Okay, um…” Evie shakes her head, tries to organize her thoughts, “So here’s the thing.”

Mal turns her attention to her, her lips not leaving her straw as she hums for Evie to go on.

“I don’t actually like you,” Evie says, and Mal raises both of her eyebrows for a second before frowning confusedly at Evie, her lips still not leaving her straw as she drank her strawberry drink while Evie struggled to explain the situation in a way she would understand, “I just had to make it look like I liked you so someone else wouldn’t think I liked  _ them _ .”

Mal’s silent for a moment as she takes that in and sets the glass back on the counter, focusing back on Evie with an unconvinced expression on her face, “Oh, okay. Who?”

“What?”

“Who?” Mal repeats, “You gotta tell me who this mystery someone is, otherwise I’m just gonna go on believing you have a secret tattoo with my face on it, that’s all.”

Evie shakes her head, “No.”

“Okay, so should I tell the school that you wrote me a love letter?” Mal asks, and Evie hates herself for taking the bait, but she really couldn’t afford on taking any chances at the moment. Life seemed to be quite fond of throwing some pretty huge curve-balls her way lately, it seemed. She sighs and turns her attention back to Mal, who’s looking at her expectantly.

“Okay, okay. Fine. Um…” She closes her eyes as she continues, “It’s Audrey Rose.”

“Wait, hold on, Audrey?” Mal frowns confusedly, “Doesn’t she  _ date _ your brother?”

Evie winces, “Yeah…”

Mal raises her eyebrows, and Evie continues, “Well, she dated my brother, in the past tense. And she also got a letter, so you can see how awkward and complicated that’s gonna get if she thinks I like her.” Evie’s fully losing her cool by that point, and she’s ready to continue her anxiety fueled ramble when Mal interrupts her.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, stop.” Mal leans forward, “I’m not the only girl that got a letter?”

Evie shakes her head no and Mal looks away from her for a moment, “Wow, you really think you’re special and then you find out she wrote love letters to two girls.”

“Well, I wrote five, actually, so don’t go feeling too special.” Evie tries to joke, and Mal raises her eyebrows in surprise.

“You wrote  _ five _ love letters?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn, King, you’re a player.” Mal chuckles, almost disbelieving, and Evie tries not to blush, “Who else did you write letters to?”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

“Maybe.”

Evie rolls her eyes, “Okay, Carlos de Vil.”

Mal blinks.

“He’s… gay.”

“Yeah, and so am I.” Evie nods and sighs, and Mal nods, an almost amused look on her face at that.

“Okay, and who else?”  

“Um… Someone from camp and someone I went to Model UN with in fifth grade.”

Mal is silent as she processes the new information, and Evie decides to take that moment to grab her bag and take the money to pay for her practically uneaten food from her front pocket. “So, are we good here?”

Mal nods and watches as Evie throws the money on the counter almost nervously, as if she couldn’t wait to be out the door.

“Um, yeah. No, yeah, we’re good.”

Evie gives her a nervous smile, getting off the stool and throwing her bag over her shoulder, “Okay, great.”

Before she could move away, though, Mal speaks up again, “Wait, wait, wait. It’s just…” She pauses, and Evie watches as she motions with her thumb from over her shoulder and towards a window, “That sparkly bike out front. Is that your ride?”

And there it is. That infuriating amused, teasing smirk on Mal’s full pink lips as she waits for Evie to confirm something she already knows to be true. Evie sighs, forces a smile on her face as she says, “Yeah.”

Mal nods slowly, and Evie just knows that she’s trying to fight her laugh.

-

“Thanks for driving me.” Evie tells her when she parks her car in front of Evie’s house.

The car ride had been a little awkward and silent – well, save from the music playing softly on Mal’s car radio. It’s not like Mal and Evie had ever been friends before, so they really didn’t have anything to talk about. At least, not that they knew of. Plus, Mal seemed to be lost in thought as she drove and Evie thought she might as well let the blonde girl to her thoughts. God knew she had enough on her own mind at that point.

“Yeah, sure.” Mal says finally, and Evie bites her bottom lip for a second.

“And I’m sorry for the whole jumping you thing.” She gives her a small smile. She really was sorry about that – Evie believes in consent. Consent is important to her. What she did today  _ was not _ something she was proud of.

Mal gives her a nod and a small smile, “Could’ve been worse, right?”

Evie avoids her eyes as she tries not to blush, and they’re silent for a moment before Mal speaks up again, “So, what are you gonna say to Audrey?”

Evie takes a deep breath, “Well, I guess I’m gonna have to tell her the truth.”

“Yeah, but uh… you know, what is the truth?” Mal asks, and her tone sounds genuinely curious, “I mean, do you like her, do you not like her?”

“It’s not your problem, Mal.” Evie says lightly, opening the door of Mal’s jeep – she thought it was a little comical how Mal was so tiny and drove a car so huge -, and she continues as she jumps out, “Can I get my bike?”

Mal silently leaves her car and helps Evie remove her bike from the back of her car and Evie thanks her for the ride again before she begins to stroll her bike slowly beside her as she makes her way to her front porch. She barely makes it halfway when Mal comes up behind her, grabbing the seat of her bike to stop her from moving.

“Hey, hold on.” Evie turns to her and watches curiously as Mal meets her eyes and continues, her tone light as if she was just commenting on the weather, “What if you didn’t tell her?”

Evie pauses, chuckles, raises her eyebrows when Mal doesn’t say anything else.

“What?” She asks.

“Yeah, what if we let people think we were actually together?” Mal shrugs, “Just for a little while. And not just Audrey. I mean everybody.”

Evie blinks, “Why would you want that?”

“Well, for starters, when CJ heard that you kissed me, she went nuts.” Mal tells her, and Evie begins to understand where Mal is coming from. She waits and Mal continues, “If she thinks you and I are a thing, then she’ll want to get back together.”

Evie nods slowly, giving Mal an almost sardonic smile, “Oh, so you wanna use me as your pawn?”

“Ah, well, you see… Technically, you used me as your pawn first when you jumped me earlier.” Mal rebuts quickly, and Evie doesn’t have an answer to that. Mal had a point. She begins to stroll her bike again, deciding not to waste any more time with Mal’s ridiculous idea, and she hears the blonde sighing from behind her.

“You don’t have to give me an answer now. Just think about it, okay?” Mal calls from behind her, and Evie rolls her eyes, not that the blonde could see it.

“Yep. Don’t hold your breath.” She calls to Mal, not looking back at her, and she leans her bike against the steps of the front porch before she makes her way to the front door, ready to get this day over with.

She doesn’t look back to see if Mal was still standing there as she closes the door behind her.

//

Later that night, Evie finds that her thoughts of Audrey are quickly silenced by thoughts of Mal.

Unfortunately, she can’t say the same about Audrey’s calls, and before she goes to sleep, she sighs sadly when she glances at the notification signaling she had ignored nothing less than 8 calls from her neighbor.

And then she sighs again when she realizes that she had unconsciously made a decision about the request she’d received from Mal earlier that day.

“I hate my life,” Evie mutters against her pillow, thankful that at least that day was over.

//

Evie finds Mal on the lacrosse field the next day. The blonde girl has on their school’s lacrosse team’s uniform and gear, and when Evie calls her name she turns and removes the helmet from her head as she approaches, a curious look on her face.

“What?” She asks when she’s standing in front of Evie, and the brunette takes a deep breath.

“Let’s do this.”

Mal gives her a smile and looks around the field, noticing the eyes of her teammates and a few other students that were hanging around the field during their free periods to watch them practice, and her response to Evie’s statement comes in the form of pulling the brunette towards her by the waist and meeting Evie’s full lips with her own.

Evie pulls away when she feels Mal trying to deepen the kiss, all too aware of the murmurs and the eyes on them, and she clears her throat when she sees the pleased –  _ and infuriating! _ – smirk the blonde has on her face.

“I’m going to trig.” Evie tells her somewhat awkwardly, and Mal nods, “Have a nice day.”

“Yeah,” Mal says after her, picking up the helmet she’d dropped and avoiding her teammates’ eyes, “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.” Evie waves from over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around as she tries to avoid eye contact with the people around her as she leaves the field, and Mal chuckles.

_ What the hell has Evie gotten herself into? _

_ // _

Evie likes to be in control. Of herself, of the situations she’s put in, of her plans, of her future. Everything in Evie’s life has to be organized – even her mess was organized, as evidenced by her bedroom.

And as the daughter of an extremely professional lawyer such as Belle King, it’s only natural that her first thought as she sits on her usual seat in trig class a few minutes after telling Mal that the pretend-to-date thing was ago, was that they would need a contract.  Not like an actual contract by law or anything like that, with punishments or anything too drastic if the conditions weren’t met or the rules were broken, but just something that would work as a way for Evie to finally feel like she has some control over this specific situation.

So, that’s one of the first things she tells Mal when they sit down in one of the picnic tables around their school campus, the tree above them casting a comfortable shadow over them as Mal sits beside Evie on the bench, not too close but also not far, the sleeves of her Auradon High hoodie rolled up to her elbows as she took a sip from her water bottle and watched as the girl beside her pulled her notebook from her bag and opened it on a blank page.

“So, first things first, we need to have a contract so we’re on the same page about the rules.” Evie says, and Mal makes a face.

“You got rules? Come on, you really know how to zap the fun out of a situation.” Mal grumbles as she leans back on the table, resting her elbows on top of it as she glances at Evie to find the girl giving her a look.

“It’s important to know where you stand on certain issues,” Evie states, almost as if she were doing a perfect impression of her mother, and Mal chuckles under her breath.

“Okay,” She nods, amused, “Like what?”

Evie’s quick to answer, “Well, for example, I don’t want you to kiss me anymore.”

Mal gapes.

“Are you crazy? Who’s gonna believe that we’re in a relationship if I’m not allowed to kiss you?”

“You may be the school’s stud and the James Dean of this kind of stuff but I’ve never really had a girlfriend before.”

“School’s stud? James Dean?” Mal repeats, raising an eyebrow before she shakes her head in disbelief, “You have the references of an 80 year old woman.”

Evie doesn’t dignify that comment with an answer, and Mal continues, “What does that matter anyway?”

“It matters because I don’t want all of my firsts to be fake.” Evie explains, “If I’m gonna be making out with someone, I’m gonna do it for real.”

“Okay, but  _ you _ kissed  _ me _ first.”

They’re in silence for a second before Evie shrugs again, not budging, “This is non-negotiable.”

Mal sighs loudly, “Fine.”

As Evie focuses her attention on the paper in front of her and begins to write down their contract, Mal stands from the bench and shoves her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie and circles around the table so she’s standing across from Evie. 

“But we need to figure something out because people are gonna get very suspicious if I’m not allowed to touch you.” Mal says, and Evie looks up from her notebook and up at the blonde in front of her.

Mal’s right.

“Okay, you have a point.” Evie allows. She thinks for a second before she continues, “How about this? You can put your hand in my back pocket.”

“Hand in your back pocket?” Mal repeats, Evie nods, “What the hell is that?”

“Sixteen Candles?” Mal blinks and Evie continues, “It’s the opening image.”

Mal shrugs, and Evie frowns, “It’s a couples’ thing.”

_ How could Mal not know that? _

“Yeah, maybe in the 70s.”

“Sixteen Candles was in the 80s,” Evie rebuts quickly, “John Hughes?”

Mal shrugs again, raising her eyebrows as she does so as if silently telling Evie that she  _ really, truly  _ did not know what she was talking about.

“Nothing?” Evie asks in disbelief, and Mal shakes her head. “ _ Okay _ … Two more rules.”

Evie grabs her pen again and scribbles down something on the paper before turning her attention up at the blonde, “You have to watch Sixteen Candles with me because it’s a classic,” Mal groans and Evie ignores her as she continues, “ _ and _ we can never tell anyone that this relationship is fake, because it would be too humiliating for the both of us.”

“Duh, first rule of  _ Fight Club _ .”

“What?”

“Are you serious?” Mal asks, shocked, leaning forward dramatically as she does so, “You’ve never seen Fight Club?’

Evie shakes her head as Mal sits down on the bench across from her, her eyebrows rising in disbelief, “Oh, my God! Okay, write it down. Double feature. After we watch the candles movie, we are watching Fight Club.”

Evie nods and begins to write it down, and Mal watches her chuckling softy when Evie begins to cite the movie titles slowly as she writes them down.

Once that’s done, Evie moves on to writing the next rule, “No snitching.”

Mal nods, and Evie looks up at her, “Anything else?”

The blonde makes a thoughtful expression for a second, and the brunette waits. After a few seconds, Mal speaks up again, her voice light and gentle in a way that makes something in Evie react, “I could… I could write you notes. Every day.”

Evie smiles, “You’d do that?”

“Sure,” Mal responds quietly, and then she shakes her head minimally, “Just… CJ was always on to me to write her them. I never did, so if I start sending them to you, she’ll be pissed. It’ll be good.”

Whatever it was that Evie had been feeling when Mal first suggested it was now gone, and Evie’s tone and smile are completely sarcastic when she says, “Wow! How romantic.”

Mal ignores her, “Also, you have to come with me to my lacrosse games and parties.”

“Then you have to pick up my sister and I and drive us to school every single day.” Evie compromises quickly.

“Okay,” Mal agrees before she grabs the pen from Evie’s hand and pulls the notebook closer to her, “But you’re coming with me on the ski trip.”

She doesn’t wait for Evie’s answer before she begins to write it down, and Evie stares.

_ The ski trip. _

Evie knew that Auradon High’s infamous ski trips were known for being the location where more students lost their virginity than Senior Week and Prom  _ combined _ . Just thinking about it made her nervous.

She’s never been –  _ obviously _ .

“Um…” She begins, and Mal looks at her while she slides the notebook back towards her and puts the pen down, “That’s like three months away. Do you really think we’re gonna still be doing this by then?”

“Let’s call it a contingency,” Mal shrugs, and when Evie doesn’t seem too convinced, she continues, “Look, no one in their right mind is gonna let their significant other go without them. So, if we are still doing this by the time it comes around… you have to go with me.”

And, well. Evie’s more than certain that by the time the ski trip comes around, Mal and her will be ancient history, and this contract will in no way still be in any way valid  _ or  _ necessary. So, that’s the only reason why she gives Mal a small, tiny smile and nods, “Okay. Deal.”

She grabs the pen from where Mal had set it down and draws two lines at the bottom of the paper with both of their names under it. She slides her notebook back towards Mal and hands her the pen and she watches as Mal eyes the paper for a quick second before quickly scribbling down her signature. She slides the notebook back to Evie with a somewhat amused expression on her face and Evie writes down her own signature before happily looking up at the blonde and offering her hand for Mal to shake.

Mal finally breaks, then, and she’s laughing in sheer amusement at Evie’s daughter-of-a-lawyer’s antics as she shakes her hand to seal the deal, so to speak.

It was official, then.

Evie was now Mal’s girlfriend.

(Well. Fake girlfriend. You get it.)

//

“I hate taking the bus,” Dizzy groans from behind her as Evie locks their front door, “Can you please just grow up and start driving?”

“Actually…” Evie begins to say, but the sound of a car horn from behind them interrupts her. The girls turn around together and watch as Mal’s jeep stops just in front of their house, and it’s not too long before Mal herself pops up from the driver’s door.

“Hey! Y’all ready?” Mal calls out to them with a smirk, and Evie turns to Dizzy to find the younger girl grinning madly.

“Oh,  _ hell _ yes!”  She says appreciatively.

“Language.” Evie chides quietly as they make their way to the car, and Dizzy apologizes half-heartedly. Mal goes back into the car once Evie and Dizzy reach the doors on the right and Evie gets in the passenger seat as Dizzy jumps into the backseat and shuffles a bit so she’s sitting in the middle.

“Hey, Little Evie, what’s that?” Mal directs her question towards Dizzy as she looks back at the younger girl sitting on her backseat, and Evie smiles amusedly at the nickname she’s seemingly given Dizzy as she puts on her seatbelt.

“The last bottle of Evie’s favorite flavor of yogurt smoothie that I won fair and square on a bet this morning,” Dizzy responds somewhat proudly and Evie sighs, “And my name, thanks for asking, is Daisy Elizabeth King. Dizzy to my friends.” She says happily, and then, her tone turns serious, “You can call me Daisy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mal nods once, and then she turns to Evie and stage whispers, “She’s feisty.”

Evie nods and turns to her sister with a smile, “Dizzy, put on your seatbelt.”

As Dizzy complies and Mal waits for them to be fully settled so she can start the car, Evie uncaps her water bottle at the same time as Dizzy speaks up from the backseat, “So, how exactly do you know my sister again?”

Mal looks from Dizzy to Evie for a second, as if trying to figure out what she should say, but finds that Evie’s too busy taking a sip of her water to answer right away. She shrugs, “Um, I guess I’m her girlfriend.”

Evie almost chokes on her water and she feels Dizzy’s eyes on her at the new information. She tries to swallow the water without causing any accidents as Mal turns back to Dizzy again, “Can I have some of that?’

“Sure.” Dizzy says as she hands Mal her bottle of yogurt smoothie and the blonde accepts it, taking a gulp and making an impressed face with her eyebrows raised before turning to Evie.

“Oh, wow, this is really good.” She says, reading the label for a moment before she turns back to Dizzy and gives her her drink back, “Hey, what do I have to do to get you to bring me one of these tomorrow?”

“You’re driving us again?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Dizzy squeals, “Okay, you can call me Dizzy!”

Mal leans closer to Evie, then, and whispers, “Progress.”

Evie tries to drown the feeling in her stomach caused by Mal’s sudden proximity with another gulp of water as the blonde finally starts the car.

//

Everyone’s eyes, not surprisingly, are on them as soon as they step into the cafeteria, Mal’s hand tucked in Evie’s back pocket of her jeans, a minimal, almost invisible gab in between their bodies as they walk together with small smiles on their faces, as if they didn’t notice the people staring. Evie guesses Mal didn’t really care about it anymore – maybe she was used to the attention.

You see, Mal is one of the most popular girls in school. The blonde has won their school many titles over the years in lacrosse, and the fact that her best friends were Jay and Uma, the captain of the football team and the captain of the swim team respectively plus CJ’s now ex-girlfriend only really added to her status.

Evie, on the other hand, liked to keep to herself and focus on her academics rather than on her social status. The debate team and the science club had been pretty much the only things Evie had actually actively signed up for, and that didn’t really make her all too popular.

But it’s not to say that Evie hated the attention – no, far from it. A part of Evie relished at the attention she was receiving, basked on it – the looks, the stares, the people envying her. It was… new, and it was exciting, and Evie found that she rather liked it.

Another part of Evie, though, was nervous. She guesses it was only natural that one would feel nervous at having so many eyes turned on her, even if Mal doesn’t seem to care much, but Evie finds herself subtly checking her outfit once to make sure that it was okay and everything was in place – pleased when upon quick inspection she finds everything is as it’s supposed to be.

She was used to being invisible, but now, people were looking at her,  _ talking _ about her. It made her giddy.

Mal sends a smirk her way then, and before she knows it, she’s being twirled by the girl until she stops abruptly when Mal grabs her by the waist.

“What are you doing?” Evie questions, a confused smile on her face, and the blonde, who’s significantly shorter than Evie, gives her a smirk as she looks up at her before she puts her hand in Evie’s back pocket again and pulls her closer to her before she uses her free hand to fish something out of her own pocket.

“This is for you.” She says, handing her a folded note with a heart and her name written on top of it in purple, and when Evie grabs it from her hands their fingers brush. Evie holds her breath when Mal takes her free hand to her neck and pulls her down slightly while she stands on her tippy toes so she can reach Evie’s ear as she whispers, “Good job.”

She puts a lock of Evie’s hair that was escaping her ponytail behind her ear softly before she pulls away slightly, and Evie gives her a small smile as she straightens her position again.

“I’ll see you in a bit, okay?” Mal says, and Evie nods, a little unable and not really trusting herself to formulate any words at the moment.

There are a lot of emotions and thoughts running through Evie as she watches Mal walk away, and Evie decides that this situation is  _ weird  _ – plain and simple. It’s weird that everyone’s eyes are on her as she turns around and begins to make her way out of the cafeteria. And it’s weird and somewhat off-putting to be congratulated on doing nothing more than accepting a note and having an ass pocket for someone to stick their hand into, but she guesses that’s where her life has taken her.

She barely makes it out of the cafeteria before she’s being pulled by the arm towards an empty classroom, and she gives Harry a small smile when the boy gives her a teasing grin, “How come I never knew ye had the hots for my cousin’s ex-girlfriend?”

Evie shrugs, fakes a smile, “I’m just as shocked as you are.”

“Did Ben freak?” Harry asks, a silly grin on his face.

Evie bites her lip.  _ Ben. _

That’s one of the things that’d been causing Evie a lot of headaches, lately. Not that the boy even knew that. Not that she wanted him to.

And it’s not even his fault, really. It’s just the fact that Evie’s still ignoring Audrey’s calls, and avoiding Audrey altogether, and the fact that Evie honestly has no idea how to even begin to explain this entire situation she’s gotten herself into to her older brother.

She’d never lied to him, not once. He’s the only person that Evie’s ever been a hundred and fifty percent honest to. And she really, really,  _ really _ didn’t want to start lying to him now – so ignoring him was really her only choice.

Whenever she’d text him, or whenever she’d pick up his Skype calls, she’d always pretend to be in a rush, or busy, or like she couldn’t really talk at the moment – she could see that it hurt him, and it hurt her too, really, but she just couldn’t risk it. It was too complicated. How would she even tell him that she has a fake girlfriend now? Better question – how could she even begin to tell him that the only reason why she has a fake girlfriend in the first place is that so she could try to convince his ex-girlfriend that Evie wasn’t still in love with her?

_ Yeah. _ Evie has nightmares about it.

“I haven’t talked to him this week yet,” Evie says finally, “so he doesn’t know yet.”

_ And he wouldn’t know ever, if she had it her way, _ Evie adds mentally.

//

That next Saturday, Evie’s in the kitchen as she begins to prepare cupcakes for Dizzy’s bake sale when there’s a knock on the front door, and she sets one of the kitchen utensils down before making her way to the door.

Evie opens the door and is surprised to find Mal standing outside, her hands on her jacket’s pockets as she takes in Evie’s appearance, “What are you supposed to be, the Pillsbury Doughboy?”

“Huh?” Evie asks, confused, and Mal takes one of her hands out of her pocket and motions wiping her own face, and Evie self-consciously takes her hand to her cheek and feels the flour on it. She wipes it quickly and then clears her throat, “I’m just making cupcakes for Dizzy’s bake sale.”

Mal nods slowly, and then she looks over Evie’s shoulder, “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Evie says after a moment, stepping back into the house and leaving the door open for Mal to follow her in.

“Cool,” The blonde says before stepping inside after her, and Evie hears the sound of the door being closed as Mal continues, “You know, cookies are way easier to make for a bake sale. Or brownies. I’m just saying.”

Evie doesn’t look up at her when she asks, “And you know this why?”

“Because I bake,” Mal responds with a shrug, and when Evie looks up at her in surprise she frowns, “What?”

“ _ You _ bake?”

“Yeah?”

“Huh.” Evie shakes her head. She couldn’t imagine it.

“What?” Mal asks, confused, and before Evie could even answer, she continues, “Anyway, doesn’t matter. Does it have to be cupcakes?”

“Yeah, because that’s what I bought ingredients for.” Evie tells her, her tone final, and Mal raises her hands in surrender. When they’re silent for a moment as Mal taps her fingers against the counter and Evie cracks an eggshell open, Evie decides they’ve been beating around the bush for long enough, “So, what are you doing here?”

Evie looks up at Mal just in time to see her frown, “Did you not read my note? I’m taking you to Jay’s party.”

“I’m not going to that.”

“Uh, yeah, you are.” Mal rebuts, “One, CJ is going to be there. And two, parties are in the contract.”

Evie gives her an apologetic – that’s not really apologetic because she’s not exactly sorry - smile, “Sorry, Mal, I can’t.”

“A deal’s a deal.” Mal says seriously, and Evie sighs. Before she could say anything in response, though, her father walks into the kitchen, his arrival going unnoticed by the two teens until he speaks up.

“You can’t what?” He asks curiously as he puts his work bag down and when he sees who his daughter had been talking to he smiles, “Do my eyes deceive me or is that Mal Faery?”

“Hi,” Mal greets the man with a small smile, and Evie watches as her father smiles brightly at her.

“Little Mal, last time I saw you you were Dizzy’s age, I believe,” He says, “The height is still the same, I’m afraid.”

Evie gives him a mortified look and Mal chuckles under her breath, “I’ve heard that one before, Mr. King. I’m afraid you’re telling an old joke. But it’s good to see you again.”

“You can call me Adam, please.” Evie watches as Mal nods as her father gives her another smile, not exactly knowing how she felt about the scene before her, and Mal looks at her for a moment before looking back at her father.

“I’m here to pick up Evie and take her to a friend’s party,” She starts, “The parents will be home, and I will definitely have her home early. Is it alright if we go?”

“Yes,” Adam says at the same time as Evie says, “no.”

Mal and Adam look at her, an expression of disbelief and one of confusion respectively on their faces. Evie shakes her head as she looks at her father, “I can’t go. I have to finish these cupcakes for Dizzy.”

“Your mom will be home with Dizzy in an hour and I think us three can handle some cupcakes better than you by yourself could,” Adam says as he walks around the counter and stops behind Evie and puts his two hands on her shoulders as he begins to push her gently, “Why don’t you go have fun with your friend Mal and leave us to it? Get dressed, get changed, you look like Casper the Friendly Ghost.”

Evie groans and tries to resist her father’s push, but he’s way stronger than she is and way more insistent on moving her from her spot as well, and Mal chuckles as Evie protests him as he grunts, as if Evie was actually heavy.

Evie stops at the staircase when she hears her father addressing Mal in the kitchen, “So, are you two going as friends or girlfriends?”

“Um…”

“Actually, doesn’t matter, the rules are the same no matter what. No drinking, no drugs, no hands and if Evie says no, it’s a no. Got it?” Evie blushes and shakes her head, feeling absolutely and incredibly mortified by her father yet again. There’s silence for a second before Mal speaks up again.

“You got it, sir.”

“Good.” Evie exhales and makes the rest of the way up the stairs when she hears her father offering Mal a drink while they wait.

//

“I don’t know, Mal, I think – “ Evie starts as her and Mal make their way up the front steps of Jay’s house.  The brunette can hear the muffled sound of the loud music playing from inside the huge house, and she’s taken aback by the size of Jay’s house for a moment before she remembers that the boy’s father was a successful businessman and the owner of one of the biggest buildings in the city, so it really only makes sense that his house would be just as big.

Mal doesn’t let her finish, “Nope, we’re going. It’s in the contract.”

Evie sighs, and Mal gives her a look before she opens the door to her friend’s house and lets her in first before stepping in. The truth is, Evie was nervous. Walking in school with Mal’s hand on hers, or Mal’s hand on her back pocket or just  _ with _ Mal is one thing. But going to a party where she knows all of Mal’s friends are gonna be in, not to mention CJ and that’s definitely going to have alcohol involved? It’s another thing completely. Evie’s nervous, and she’d spent almost an hour in her room trying to decide on an outfit – settling on her favorite pair of high waisted jeans paired up with a simple, yet classy top and a leather jacket she’d gotten for Christmas the prior year and had added a few things to make it her own, the entire look finished up with the pair of designer boots that CJ had labeled as “government-issued” ignorantly a few weeks ago. She thought she looked good enough for her very first high-school party, and she thinks Mal agreed with her, by the way Mal had given her an once over and a nod as soon as she’d come down the stairs earlier.

Once Mal walks in and closes the door and before they could walk into the party, the blonde turns to her, “Are you ready?”

Evie bites her lip, and suddenly she wishes she’d had more time to do something better with her hair – she’d left it up in her usual ponytail, and now she was second guessing it. Maybe it’d look better in a bun?

Deciding to take her chances, she takes her hands to her hair, and Mal’s eyes follow the movement, “What are you doing? Give me this.”

She stands on her tippy toes as she reaches for Evie’s hair, and before the brunette could do anything about it, the blonde has her favorite scrunchie in her hands, and her hair is falling over her back in un-brushed waves. “Give me that back.”

Mal hides her hair-tie behind her back when Evie tries to reach for it and shakes her head, “I’m keeping it. I like your hair down,” Mal watches as Evie begins to tame her hair with her fingers, and she adds, “You look pretty.”

Evie doesn’t believe her. She hasn’t washed her hair in a day. Mal sighs when she notices Evie’s disbelieving expression and pulls her phone from her jacket pocket, “I’ll prove it to you.”

Evie takes her hands to her cheeks when Mal raises her phone to her and looks straight into the camera, and Mal has this tiny smile on her face as she snaps the picture, “See?” she asks, turning her phone screen to her and showing her the picture she’d just taken.

Evie guesses she doesn’t look _ that _ bad.

“Fine, but you can’t lose it, okay?” She says finally, motioning to the hair-tie in Mal’s hand, “That’s my favorite scrunchie.”

Mal snaps the scrunchie on her wrist and responds, “Deal. Now give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“Would you  _ please _ trust me?”

Evie sighs and pulls out her phone from her jacket’s pocket and hands it to Mal. The blonde clicks on the home button so the screen lights up, and then she slides the screen to the right for the camera. She raises the phone up on selfie mode and makes a face that Evie thinks is  _ kinda _ cute as she snaps a picture.

“Alright,” She says as she hands her her phone back, “You need to make this your new background.”

“What’s your new background?” Evie asks as she takes her phone back, and the blonde rolls her eyes.

“Come on, you know I already got it.” She pulls out her phone from her pocket again and turns her screen to Evie so the brunette can see that the picture Mal had just taken of her was already set as her lockscreen. Evie feels something tugging in her heart at that, but instead of overthinking it she just mirrors Mal’s tiny smile and sets the selfie the blonde had taken of herself as her own lockscreen image.

Apparently satisfied with Evie’s hair and their new lockscreens and deeming the brunette ready enough, Mal holds out her hand for Evie to take and begins to pull her with her towards the party.

“Wait, maybe I should just go back…”

Mal sounds almost amused when she says, “come on!” and pulls her harder.

Walking into the party with Mal is a new experience – one that she doesn’t think she’d have with just anyone. All eyes are on them as they make their way in, Evie’s body practically glued to Mal’s as their hands are clasped together, and Mal nods and greets a few people as they make their way through the crowd.

Suddenly, Evie feels a rush of pride. Mal’s here with  _ her. _

Or, well, she’s here with Mal. It doesn’t matter – the fact is:  _ hers _ are the hands that Mal’s holding in front of all of these people from their school. 

Mal leads them towards one of the tables where she can see Jay and Uma playing beer pong with a few other people from their respective teams, and Mal and Evie stop by them just in time to see Jay take an impressive shot and cheer along with everyone around them.

The long haired boy turns when he notices them, and he taps Uma’s shoulder twice before the girl is turning around and smiling as she sees her best friend.

“Mal, finally!” She exclaims, “We were wondering when you would get here.”

The blonde nods, “I had to stop by Evie’s first.”

Uma looks at the brunette by her friend’s side as if just noticing her, and Evie’s instantly warmed by the smile Uma gives her, “Oh, hey, girl! I was dying to meet you. Mal’s told me  _ nothing  _ about you.”

Evie chuckles under her breath when she sees the pointed glare the girl gives the blonde, and she licks her lips before answering, “Hi, I’m Evie. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Uma,” She says, as if it was necessary, and Evie likes that Uma’s apparently trying her best to make her feel at ease, and then she claps Jay on the shoulder. The boy smiles and nods at Evie as Uma says, “This is Jay. We’re Mal’s best friends. Clearly we haven’t raised her well, because she was the one supposed to do these introductions.”   

Evie chuckles at the jab and Mal rolls her eyes.

“Uma, Jay, this is my girlfriend Evie,” Mal says, overly polite, “Evie, these are Uma and Jay, my best friends.”

“Now we’re talking!” Jay says for the first time, his smile teasing, and he holds out his hand for Evie, “Honored to meet the girl that saved Mal from a life filled with despair.”

“Hey!”

“Nice to meet you, Jay.” Evie says at the same time, and Jay winks at her, completely ignoring his friend’s offended expression.

Mal rolls her eyes, and while Uma and Jay chuckle, she turns to Evie, “I’m gonna go grab something to drink. Do you want anything?”

“Yeah, sure.” Evie nods, and Mal raises one expectant eyebrow at her, “Surprise me.”

The blonde gives her a nod, and she lingers beside Evie for a moment before she sends Uma and Jay a warning look and walks away. Evie bites her lip nervously as she watches her for a second, not exactly knowing how to act now that she was alone with Mal’s best friends.

Luckily, Uma’s got her, “Hey, so, how did you two get together? I mean, it was all so sudden I’m not sure Mal even told me anything about it.”

Evie pauses. Right. The get-together story.

The brunette rummages through her head for something, anything – and she curses herself and Mal mentally for not thinking of it earlier. It’d totally slipped her mind that people would probably be interested on how they’ve gotten together and how Evie managed to whisk Mal away from CJ, one of the school’s most popular girls, so easily.

“Um, it was really sudden,” Evie begins to improvise, and then a memory hits her almost instantly and she continues, “I almost hit Mal with my car on the first week of school and we kind of… talked. And then we kept talking,” She’s not exactly lying. That was how things happened, even if she was leaving some key information out, “And, I mean, we were each other’s first kisses, so… I don’t know.”

She finishes with a shrug, and Jay raises one eyebrow as Uma nods, seemingly remembering that piece of information, “Oh, yeah. I totally forgot about that! Seventh grade, right?”

Evie nods.

“Well, that’s a cute story,” Uma says, and Jay nods, “I’m still pissed that Mal apparently doesn’t tell us shit anymore, but it’s cute. You guys are cute together.”

That comment coming from Uma, Mal’s best friend since kindergarten, kind of warms Evie up a bit and she feels herself blush – writing it off as contentment that they apparently were managing to pull this whole thing off, and not for any other reason. She smiles, and Uma smiles back.

“Hey, Evie, do you play beer pong?” Jay asks, motioning to the table, and Evie bites her lip.

“Um…” Before she could answer, though, a voice to their right and across the room calls for Evie’s name, and the three look up to find CJ and one of her best friends, a girl with dark hair that Evie doesn’t really recall the name of, looking at her with unsettling smiles that the brunette thinks are supposed to look inviting.

The girl that Evie doesn’t remember the name of waves her over as she practically shouts over the music, “Come sit with us.”

Evie looks from them to Mal’s friends by her side nervously, as if unsure, and Uma gives her an encouraging nod, “Go on. We’ll be watching in case it gets ugly.”

“Yeah, we got your back.” Jay adds, turning to his game, and Evie takes a deep breath and nods as Uma gives her a smile.

“CJ knows better than start a scene here, so you’re safe.” Uma says when Evie begins to walk away, and the certainty in her voice as she says this is enough to ease up Evie’s nerves a bit.

The brunette tries to find Mal in the midst of the low-lit room and all the bodies surrounding her as she makes her way to the two girls, but no such luck. She sighs and sits on the couch beside the two girls and forces a fake smile out of her face. She’s had enough interactions with CJ over the years that this is routine by now, and she’s thankful that her nervousness at having to interact with Mal’s ex-girlfriend without the blonde beside her for the first time doesn’t ruin that. CJ ignores her as her friend turns to Evie with a grin that seems just as fabricated as Evie’s.

She leans forward, “So, what’s up with you and Mal?”

Evie knows she’s doing CJ’s dirty work. She knows that she’s asking because CJ asked her to, but a quick glance towards the other girl shows her that CJ is trying to appear casual as she sips her drink, as if all she has is harmless curiosity. Evie doesn’t let it fool her – she knows she’s waiting for an answer.

Evie bites her lip, “Whatever Mal says, I suppose.”

Her tone is light and easy, and Evie thinks she does a good job of answering that this time around. It’s not a perfect answer by any means, but it’s a solid one when delivered without hesitation.

CJ’s friend –  _ was it Karla? Kim? _ – waves her answer off, though, as if it’s not good enough for her. Evie knows it’s actually not good enough for CJ, “Yeah, yeah, but we want to hear it from you.”

Evie glances at CJ for a split second, but the blonde notices it and rolls her eyes good-naturedly, as if she thinks Evie is silly for taking her feelings into account. But the gesture is clearly fabricated, and Evie doesn’t exactly care about CJ’s feelings.

“Come on, Evie, you can say it. It’s okay. Mal and I are over,” CJ says, her tone light, but so fake at the same time, “I don’t know if she told you this, but I was the one to break up with her.”

Evie nods, “She did.”

She didn’t. Harry had been the one to tell her that.

“So, what’s up with you two? When did you guys get together?” CJ asks, trying to sound offhand, like she’s a friend asking another friend about their love life. Evie doesn’t buy it. She knows that whatever she says next matters to the other girl.

“Pretty recently.” Evie responds.

“How recently?” She presses, and Evie pauses.

“Right after school started,” Evie responds finally, and her tone following her pause made it seem like she’d been trying to respect CJ’s feelings, “Um, a few days after you guys…” Evie trails off, and CJ seems to get the message.

“Right.” She nods, and there’s something about her tone and the look in her eyes that Evie can’t quite pinpoint. She waits, and CJ gives her a fake smile, “Well, I think you guys are adorable.”

“You do?” Evie asks, not exactly expecting that turn of events. She’d known and interacted with the other girl enough to know that she could be pretty mean and vicious when she wanted to be – and even though they had been civil to each other so far in this interaction, even if faking it, she hadn’t expected the girl to actually compliment them.

CJ was  _ good _ .

She nods, “Of course!”

Her friend gives her a smile that looks just as fake as CJ’s, and Evie nods slowly before giving them one of her own fake smiles.

“Well,” CJ says as she moves to stand, “I’m gonna get a refill. Can I get you anything?”

Evie’s surprised to see that the question is directed to her. She doesn’t let it show, though, and shakes her head slowly as she gives CJ a tiny smile, “No, thank you. Mal’s getting me something.”

CJ nods, and before she could say anything or react, a voice coming from behind Evie stops her, “What’s up, babe?”

Evie turns her head and exhales in relief when she sees Mal walking around the couch, two solo cups in her hands as she moves to sit really close to Evie on the couch, moving so one of her legs is over Evie’s as she completely ignores CJ and her friend, who are looking at her expectantly.

When it’s clear that Mal won’t give them the time of day as she keeps her eyes solely focused on Evie as she hands her a cup, the brunette hears a humph from where CJ was standing and she turns her head just in time to watch the girl and her friend walk away.

Evie takes a sip of the drink she’s been offered and makes a face, wincing at the taste and looking inside the cup in disgust, “Why’s beer so vinegary?”

Mal looks at her, then, and she gives her an apologetic smile as she reaches for her drink to switch it for the one she’s holding, “It’s not, sorry. That’s my drink.”

Evie frowns, “What is that?”

“Kombucha?” Mal says in tone of questioning, and when Evie makes a face, she actually laughs, “I thought you’d like that stuff.”

Evie frowns, “Why?”

“Aren’t you always drinking tea and like, eating gluten free food?” Mal asks, “I swear, I’ve only ever seen you eating veggies and stuff like that during lunch time.”

Evie doesn’t comment on the fact that Mal seemingly pays enough attention to her that she knows of Evie’s eating habits, and decides to keep on the matter at hand, “Not Kombucha, though. I didn’t expect  _ you _ to drink it.”

“I’m driving, remember?” Mal shrugs, “Besides, it’s good for your digestion. I try to keep it relatively healthy because of lacrosse and everything.”

Evie nods. That makes sense. But still, it’s an unexpected and somewhat endearing new fact about the blonde and she gives Mal a tiny smile when the blonde takes a sip of her drink.

They’re silent for a moment, and when Evie begins to try and start conversation, Mal pulls out her phone from her jacket pocket again and says, “Here, let’s take another picture.”

“You like taking pictures, don’t you?” Evie asks while Mal unlocks her phone, and the blonde glances up at her before glancing back at her phone as she opens the camera app and puts it on selfie mode and raises her arm up at a good angle.

Ignoring her question, she says, “Do something cute.”

Evie acts on instinct and leans over so she’s pressing a kiss to Mal’s cheek, and the blonde grins at the camera as she snaps the picture. Then, she moves her arm a bit so she can take another and Evie smiles and Mal snaps another picture.

“Perfect,” Mal says, putting her arm down, and Evie watches as she opens the pictures on another app and begins to fiddle with it. They’re quiet for a moment as Mal focuses on what she’s doing before she locks her phone and puts it back in her pocket, “And to answer your question, I do like taking pictures.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mal nods and takes another sip of her drink, “I just got a new camera and everything.”

Evie processes that information. She didn’t know that about Mal. But then again, she didn’t exactly  _ know _ Mal.

“Cool,” Evie says, finally, and Mal gives her an amused look, “What?”

“Nothing.” Mal shakes her head, but she looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Evie shrugs, and takes a sip of her beer. When she makes a face and glances inside her cup again, Mal loses it.

“Yeah, that doesn’t taste any better, does it?”

“No,” Evie responds, and Mal chuckles, “Can I have a sip of that?”

Mal looks from the cup in her hands to Evie and laughs again.

-

Mal excuses herself a little later to go to the bathroom, and Evie stands up from the couch when she notices a few people approaching. She barely makes it across the room before someone grabs her shoulders, and she jumps and turns around quickly only to smile when she finds Carlos looking at her with a grin.

“Hey.” Carlos greets.

“Hi!” Evie greets back, relieved to see a familiar face, “I didn’t know you came.”

“Well, what up, here I am.” Carlos says, giving her a shrug, and Evie chuckles, “So, you’re with Mal, huh? Did she get a letter too?” He asks, teasing.

Evie bites her lip, “Yeah, but you gotta keep that a secret.”

“Girl, you know I got you,” Carlos winks, and then he looks around, “Where is she, though?”

“Um, she just went to the bathroom,” Evie says, motioning towards the staircase that leads upstairs, and Carlos raises his eyebrows when he turns his eyes in that direction. Evie frowns and follows his eyesight, and she manages to catch CJ watching them before she turns her attention to somewhere else.

“Creepy,” Carlos shudders, and he chuckles when Evie hums in agreement, “She give you a hard time?”

“Subtly,” Evie responds, and Carlos nods, understanding, “So, are you here with anyone?”

“Hm? Oh, well, no. I mean, kinda?” Carlos frowns and Evie waits, “Um, I’m here with Jay, sorta.”

Evie smirks, “Oh?”

“Not like… that,” Carlos says, giving her a tiny, shy smile that makes Evie want to squeeze his cheeks, “We’re in this… tentative friendship. I’ve been helping him with science.”

“Oh,” Evie nods, and then, “But you want it to be more.”

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” Carlos shakes his head, and then he glances at the drink in Evie’s hands and smiles, “Is that orange juice?”

“Yeah,” Evie nods, and they chuckle, “People were mixing theirs with alcohol or something, but I’m a simple girl.”

“Right,” Carlos chuckles, and then he asks her about her Literature presentation for the next week and they get so caught up in their discussion that they don’t notice it when CJ makes her way upstairs, sending a furtive glance Evie’s way to make sure that she was distracted enough.

-

“Go on, try it.”

Carlos eyes the cup, “I’m not gonna lie to you, that sounds nasty.”

Evie watches in amusement as Carlos sniffs the cup Evie had been holding for Mal that’s half-filled with Kombucha and laughs when he makes a disgusted face quickly after.

“Come on, bottoms up,” She says encouragingly, and Carlos takes the cup tentatively up to his lips. Evie’s thoroughly amused now, and that’s how Mal finds them.

“Hey, I think I’m ready to call it a night. You ready to leave?” She asks as a greeting, and before Evie could answer her, her attention is taken by the sound of Carlos gagging. She looks at him and laughs as she watches him glare at the cup in his hands. When he notices Evie’s eyes on him, he looks up and looks from Evie to Mal quickly before he settles on meeting Evie’s eyes.

“Oh, go ahead. Go, go.” He waves her away, and Evie hesitates.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, girl. Go,” He nods, “I’ve gotta go find Jay anyway. Don’t worry about me.”

“Alright.” Evie says, giving him a smile, and begins to walk towards Mal, “Bye!“

“See ya.” Carlos calls from behind her, and Evie takes the hand that Mal’s offering to her and allows herself to be pulled away.

They’re sitting in silence as Mal begins to drive away from Jay’s house a few minutes later, and it’s another moment before Mal finally speaks up, “Did CJ ask you anything?”

“She asked me when we got together.” Evie recalls, and Mal nods at her to go on, “That was basically it. She was being extra friendly and even said we’re cute together.”

Mal shakes her head before she gives Evie a quick smile, “Well, she’s jealous. So, good job.”

“Thanks.” Evie says, and they’re silent again before Evie speaks up, “I didn’t expect her to act so…”

“Friendly?” Mal finishes for her, and when Evie nods, she rolls her eyes, “That’s the calm before the storm. It’s all fake smiles and friendliness before she just… steamrolls over you if you don’t keep your guard up.”

“She sounds like a fun person to date.” Evie comments and Mal chuckles humorlessly.

“She has her moments,” Mal shrugs, “But sometimes it’s just… Like, that one day she was being a bitch about your shoes.”

“You remember that?” Evie asks surprised. Mal doesn’t look away from the road as she nods.

“Yeah, of course,” She responds, “I couldn’t say anything then because we were together and everything, but I just don’t really understand what the big deal was. I thought your shoes were kinda hot.”

Evie smiles, and Mal doesn’t give her time to thank her for the compliment before she continues, “CJ is gorgeous, but I’ve always thought you had way better style. Like, your clothes are just… original, you know?”

Evie flushes, thoroughly pleased by the compliment and very thankful that the car was dark so Mal wouldn’t notice her blushing as she thanked her. Evie considers her fashion one of the most important things about her – it’s how she expresses herself. She tries to put a bit of her personality in every piece of clothing that she owns, and it makes her incredibly happy to know that someone likes them.

Mal smiles at her, and they’re silent again for another few minutes while Evie lets her mind wander. Before she knows it, a question strikes in her mind and she’s voicing it out loud before she even gets to second guess it.

“How did you know you loved her?”

“God, why do you always have to ask those kind of questions?” Mal asks with a groan, and Evie shrugs.

“I’m just a naturally curious person,” She says, and then, “why do you look scared to answer my question?”

“I’m not scared,” Mal grumbles.

“Then answer my question.”

Mal goes silent for a moment, and Evie thinks she’s just going to let her question hang in the air until they get to Evie’s home. When Evie’s sure that Mal’s not going to give her an answer, Mal speaks up, “I don’t know if I ever loved her. I don’t even know if I know what that’s supposed to feel like. I’m only sixteen.”

“Sixteen is not that young to be in love,” Evie shakes her head, “People used to get married at sixteen.”

“Yeah, a hundred years ago,” Mal rebuts quickly, “When there was no Internet or electricity and dudes that were barely eighteen years old went to wars and all that. They lived a lot of life by the time they were sixteen, so it’s not the same,” Mal says, “What do kids our age know about love and life?”

Evie’s silent for a moment – not because she doesn’t have an answer, but because she’s never seen Mal speaking like this before. Like she actually cares and believes passionately in what she’s saying. Gone are all of the smirks and teasing glances, and instead Evie’s looking at a frowning Mal, as if she’s actually interested in what Evie has to say to that.

“You sound like my grandpa,” Evie says, and Mal rolls her eyes. Evie continues, “And I think you’re stalling because you don’t want to answer to my question.”

“I did answer your question. It just wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

Mal pulls up in front of Evie’s house and turns off the engine, and Evie is well used to getting rides from Mal since the day they started this whole thing to know that this was something that Mal did when she wanted to talk for a little while longer, so she doesn’t jump out of the car right away. Instead, she turns a bit on the seat and watches as Mal leans her head back against the headrest of her seat and closes her eyes.

“She’s really got a hold on you, huh?” Evie says, not asks, and her tone isn’t unkind. It’s just a simple observation.

Evie expects Mal to deny the statement, to roll her eyes or wave her off, but instead, the blonde sighs tiredly and says, “I wish she didn’t. I don’t want to be owned by anyone. Or belong to anyone.”

Evie thinks about that for a second as she watches the way the moonlight reflects on Mal’s skin. Belle and Adam had taught her and her siblings that they should belong to themselves, first and foremost. But Evie likes to think that she belongs to them. They’re her family, after all. Especially with her story, she finds comfort in that simple statement. She belongs to them. With them.

And she guesses that part of her has always dreamed about one day belonging to someone else. To be theirs and to have them be hers.

“That’s why you’re doing this,” Evie picks up conversation again, and she’s not exactly asking her this, “To prove that you don’t belong to or with her,” when Mal nods, she raises an eyebrow, “do you think there’s a difference?”

Mal shrugs, “I think one implies you have a choice; the other doesn’t.”

That makes sense. But still, “you must really love her to be going through all of this trouble.”

Mal waves her off, “I think you romanticize everything.”

“Maybe,” Evie shrugs, not really taking that as an insult, “Thank you.” She adds, just to annoy the blonde. Mal grunts.

“Anyway, what do you even know about that kinda stuff?” Mal asks, her tone bordering on bitter at having been read so easily by the other girl, “If I recall correctly, you’ve never dated anyone before.”

“That’s true, I haven’t,” Evie allows, but then, “But I’ve met plenty of people that have dated before and have never been in love. I’ve been in love. That’s why I’m doing this, remember?”

Mal snorts, “Right, with Audrey, right?”

“What’s with the mocking tone?” Evie frowns.

“Nothing, just… Audrey, really?”

Evie’s quick to answer to that one, “CJ, really?”

Mal squints at her, “You sure do have a lot of opinions, don’t you?”

“That’s why I’m in the debate team,” Evie gives her a proud grin, “I just think you think that because no one’s ever been honest with you before.”

Mal chuckles and shakes her head, “Clearly you didn’t spend enough time with Uma and Jay tonight.”

The brunette chuckles in response to that, recalling one of the first things Jay had told her when they were introduced. She guesses Mal had a point. They’re quiet for another moment before Mal speaks up again, “How come you’ve never dated anybody?”

Her tone isn’t biting or anything, just curious. Evie shrugs, “I don’t know. I guess no one’s ever liked me like that.”

“Bullshit,” Mal says immediately, “I know for a fact that Jade asked you out last year and you said no.”

Evie’s surprised Mal knows that, “Are you keeping tabs on me?”

“No,” Mal shakes her head, “Jade’s Jay’s cousin.”

“Right.” Evie nods, and Mal looks at her expectantly, “What?”

Mal groans, “Come on, King, you gotta talk to me.  Be honest with me.”

Evie sighs and looks out the window for a moment, towards Audrey’s house and biting her lip for a moment when she sees the shadow of the girl from her bedroom window. She hadn’t talked to Audrey in days, still hell-bent on avoiding her calls.

She glances back at Mal and finds the blonde watching, waiting. She exhales, “I guess… I was just scared.”

Mal frowns, “Of Jade?”

“No,” Evie shakes her head quickly, “I like Jade. It’s just…” She trails off, trying to find the words, “Okay, so. Love and dating? I love to read about it, and it’s fun to write about and to think about it in my head, but… when it’s real… when it’s not just thinking about a person, when it’s an actual real person standing in front of you with expectations and wants…” She trails off again, and she’s surprised when she meets Mal’s eyes again and notices that her eyes are intent and focused, as if she’s paying close attention to what Evie’s saying, clear and sincere interest in her expression.

“What, it’s scary?” Mal finishes for her, and Evie nods.

“Yeah,” She agrees in a self-conscious whisper. She hasn’t really ever shared that with anyone else before – not even Ben.

“Why?” Mal asks curiously, as if she genuinely wants to know.

“Because the more people that you let into your life, the more that can just… walk right out.” Evie is quick to respond this time, and the look on Mal’s face tells Evie that she understands what she means.   

“Just… like your mom, right?” Mal asks softly, carefully. A part of Evie is surprised that Mal would remember something like that, but she guesses that they had been friends way back when for long enough that Mal wouldn’t forget something like that. Evie nods.

Mal watches her in silence for a moment before she speaks up, her voice still gentle, “Did you know that my dad left us?”

Evie nods. She did know that.

“That was a while ago, right?” Evie asks softly.

Mal nods, “Two summers ago,” she looks away then, towards the dashboard of her car and continues, “He’s got a new wife and a kid now.”

Evie feels heaviness in her chest and says, her tone as sincere as possible, “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no. It’s fine, it’s… I don’t usually talk about it,” Mal says, looking up at her again, “I just left like maybe you’d understand ‘cause… ‘cause of your mom. Not that it’s anywhere near the same thing…”

She sounds really nervous all of sudden, as if afraid that she was overstepping, and Evie shakes her head and gives her a reassuring smile, “No, it’s fine. I completely understand.”

Mal nods and gives her a smile, as if relieved. If she’s relieved that she hadn’t offended the girl or that Evie understood she wasn’t sure, but Evie decides to continue, “Yeah, it’s… it’s hard, huh?”

Mal shrugs, “It’s whatever.”

“We don’t have to talk about it, but it’s not whatever.” Evie says lightly, softly, reassuring. Mal looks at her for a moment, and Evie watches as she tries to hold back a smile.

The look in her eyes are soft when she says, “I think it’s funny, you say that you’re scared of commitment and relationships, but you don’t seem to be afraid to be with me.”

“Oh, well, there’s no reason to be.”

“Yeah?” Mal asks, leaning forward slightly, that teasing smirk that Evie’s so used to beginning to appear on her face again, “Why’s that?”

“Because we’re just pretending,” Evie shrugs.

“Right,” Mal nods, leans back again. Evie thinks she sees Mal’s smirk disappear for a second before it comes back, “Was just making sure you remembered.”

“I do,” Evie nods. They’re in silence again, and it’s comfortable.

“Hey, can I ask you something? Since you like being honest with me.” Mal speaks up after a second, and there’s something about her tone and the curious grin on her face that makes Evie nod at her to go on, “What did you ever see in me?”

The question sounds like it’s teasing – like Mal’s cocky and sure of her charm. Like the usual Mal that Evie knew. The Mal that smirked too much, and rolled her eyes too much, and acted like she was above self-doubt. That’s the only reason why Evie says, “I really couldn’t tell you.”

The grin on Mal’s face falters again, and when it comes back, it doesn’t look like it belongs there. She licks her lips, “You, um… you said it was because I made you feel special. And, um, that I’m good at art and… you know, drawing and stuff.”

Evie eyes her curiously for a moment, recalling writing those words on her letter back in middle school. She gives Mal one of her own smirks when she says, “You sure memorized every word on that letter, huh?”

There’s a surge of satisfaction when Mal’s teasing grin disappears from her face at that, and it quickly turns into remorse when Evie realizes that she’s hurt Mal’s feelings for no good reason. She bites her lip and thinks of a way to make it better. After a second, she adds, “No, I mean, it’s true. What I wrote – you did have something about you then.”

Evie thinks she’s made it worse, because Mal flinches before she gives her a humorless chuckle. The brunette is confused by that, and she doesn’t know what else to say to possibly make it better. Mal doesn’t wait for her to figure it out.

“Right, well. I can count on you to be honest, always.” She says, and there’s a bite to her tone that Evie doesn’t really like. It doesn’t feel right, especially not when it’s directed to her.

The silence between them is awkward as Evie doesn’t really know what she could possibly say to make this situation better, doesn’t even know if the problem is with what she’s said or what exactly is going on through the blonde’s head now, but before she could leave the car, she just has to ask, “Are we cool?”

Mal nods way too quickly for it to be a sincere response, “Yeah, we’re fine, King.”

Evie bites her lip as she reaches for the door handle, and before she leaves, she just has to say something – “Um, thanks for the ride.”

Mal nods, doesn’t look at her as she says, “Yeah, thanks for coming to the party.”

Evie nods, and when Mal doesn’t look at her or doesn’t say anything else, she climbs out of the car, a weird feeling in her chest that doesn’t really leave her for the rest of the night and only gets worse when she checks her phone and finds that she’s been tagged in a new post on Instagram.

Unlocking her phone and opening the app, she waits a moment for the screen to load and bites her lip when she looks at the picture Mal had posted of them and tagged her in. She posted the two pictures they had taken on the couch at the party earlier that night, and the only thing in the caption was an emoji of a blushing smiley face.

Evie finds that she’s holding her breath when she comments the same emoji a few times after liking the picture, and she finds that she’s exhaling and grinning when Mal replies to her comment with a purple heart emoji.


	3. Part 3.

 

As the weeks roll around, Evie finds that fake dating Mal was getting easier and easier. She always ate with her in the cafeteria, and she was even becoming friends with her friends. Mal took lots and lots of pictures of her, and sometimes she would even draw her. Most of her time would be spent by Mal’s side, and people had stopped looking at them whenever they’d walk through the halls holding hands. Harry would sometimes join them during lunch and whenever they’d hang out, and Evie’s pleased to see that apparently he and Uma had started to get some new development, as sometimes they would sit by each other and tease their best friends – i.e. Evie and Mal – together.

Carlos joins them sometimes, too, as he’s friendship with Jay had turned more solid over the weeks since the party – and Evie thinks that there’s something else going on between them, but Carlos always denies it when she asks and Mall tells her that Jay’s the same. Evie shrugs it off and decides that they’ll come forward when they’re ready, even if it is kind of obvious that they’re into each other.

She has enough on her mind to worry about.

She’s still avoiding Audrey, and whenever Audrey manages to get her by herself on the rare occasions that she’s not with Mal by her side, Evie’s always making an excuse and scurrying off to, well, meet Mal.

She texts Ben back a few times, but finds it impossible to actually hold a conversation with him through Skype calls or anything with actual substance because she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him about everything that’s going on in her life – even if she would be lying by omission.

So, whenever Ben asks her how she’s been, she pauses, smiles, and says that _“things have been great, Ben. Harry says hi. How’s Scotland?”_

_//_

“What’s your favorite food?” Evie asks Mal one afternoon while the blonde is driving her back home. Dizzy isn’t on the backseat this time, having been picked up by their dad from school so they could go to her dentist appointment together.

“I like everything.” Mal says.

Evie shakes her head, “Not possible.”

“Well, but it is.” She shrugs, and she chuckles when Evie sighs aggravated, “Fine. I like strawberries.”

“Your favorite food is strawberries?” Evie asks, frowning. Mal nods, “Like, plain strawberries? Not… strawberry pancakes, or… I don’t know, any strawberry related food?”

“Nope. Just plain strawberries.” Mal says, and Evie gapes at her. “What?”

“You like strawberries over pizza? And cheeseburgers and… I don’t know, any other food?”

“Yes,” When she sees that Evie is going to question her further, she groans, “Quit picking my choice apart! I stand by my choice.”

Evie shrugs, “Fine.”

“What’s your favorite food?” Mal asks.

“I don’t have a favorite.” She responds, and Mal laughs loudly.

//

On a day that Dizzy stays home sick, Mal’s late to pick her up. Evie checks the time at least twice in fifteen minutes, and when she’s about to start getting _really_ impatient with Mal, the girl’s car pulls over in front of her house and Evie runs towards it and hops inside. Before she can say anything, Mal says, “I know, I know. I’m late. But look what I brought you.”

She passes Evie a muffin, and before Evie could question her, she continues, “I stopped by that cafe you like. Managed to catch ‘em just as they opened for the day, so the muffin’s fresh out of the oven.”

Evie grins and breaks a piece off the top of the muffin and pops it into her mouth.

“Wonderful,” She hums, and Mal gives her a sidelong glance as she begins to pull out of Evie’s driveway.

“So I’m forgiven for being late?”

“Your heart was in the right place,” Evie nods, “Hey, do you have any water?”

“Um, no, but I think there’s still coffee in my cup on the cup holder,” Mal answers as she focuses on the road. Evie looks down and sees that the blonde was right, and she looks up at Mal to find that the blonde isn’t looking at her.

“Um… can I?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Mal nods, and Evie takes a gulp out of the girl’s cup. Putting it back, she takes another bite off her muffin and sighs.

“This is the best muffin I’ve ever had.”

Mal chuckles, “Good, I’m glad.”

//

Mal invites her to come with her to this estate sale on Saturday. She says that her mother wanted her to pick up a set of rare chairs for her antiques collection and that the trip would be boring and it’d be good for their scheme. Neither mentions that the estate fair is in a city that’s two hours away from theirs, where it was likely that no one from their city would even _think_ about going, and that it was during the weekend – which, you know, unless it was a school event or something of the sort, doesn’t really do anything for their situation.

But she guesses that they’re friends now, or something close to that. Spending time with Mal isn’t so bad, so she accepts the invitation and they go together and it’s fun – they listen to music on the way there as they make conversation, and when they get to their destination and Mal’s looking around to find the _“damned chairs”_ they were there for in the first place, Evie walks around and looks through the things exposed. She’s sifting through a box filled with old, most likely fake jewelry, and thinking about how much Dizzy would like some of those when Mal comes up behind her minutes later.

“Did you get the chairs?” Evie asks.

“I did,” Mal nods, and then, “See anything cool?” She asks.

Evie nods, holding up a piece of a shiny blue rock that’s obviously meant to mimic a real blue diamond, and says, “I love these.”

Mal frowns, “Why?”

“They’re great for making jewelry,” Evie says, “Dizzy’s obsessed with it, and whenever I find something that I think she’d like, I try to take them with me. How much do you think these cost?”

Mal glances at the box, “I dunno. Probably not a lot since they’re here with all of these $5 knick-knacks. Do you want me to go and ask while you look for the good ones?”

“You’d do that?”

Mal eyes her weirdly, “Yeah, dude. It’s no problem.”

Evie finds it weird to be called dude by Mal, but she just goes with it, “Could you ask, please?”

“Alright, I’ll be right back.” Evie nods and turns her attention back to the box. Once she finds a few rocks that she thinks Dizzy would like and a rock that she’d like to keep for herself, Mal returns with a grin, “The man said that these rocks are like, basically trash to him because most of them are just plastic. He even forgot those were there.”

“So? How much for them?”

“Did you not just hear me? He said they’re trash. Plus, with the fortune that my mom paid for those chairs, he said that we could just take them as a bonus.”

Evie squints, “Are you lying?”

Mal rolls her eyes, “Why would I lie about that? Do you wanna go ahead and ask him yourself?”

Evie studies her for a second, and when Mal only looks annoyed that Evie doesn’t seem to trust her, she nods, “Alright. But if I get the cops knocking on my door because I took this box home with me, you’ll be hearing from my mother.”

Mal snorts, and Evie grabs the box with her two hands and holds it to her chest carefully. With one last glance at the man that had sold Mal the chairs and finding him watching them with a smile, not exactly mad that Evie was clearly taking something from his possession, she decides that maybe she could try and start trusting Mal a little more.

-

Evie falls asleep on the drive home, and the next thing she knows, she’s waking up to Mal shaking her shoulder softly as she says, “We’re here.”

Evie opens her eyes and looks around her for a second and realizes that they’re parked in Evie’s driveway. She sits up straight and rolls her shoulders a bit as Mal watches her. Evie glances at the box on her lap for a moment and then she smiles, “Thanks for today, Mal. I had fun.”

“Thanks for coming with me,” Mal says, and then she slaps her forehead as if just remembering something, “Oh, yeah. I totally forgot to mention – my mom wants you to come over tomorrow night for dinner.”

Evie squints against the 4PM sunlight that’s creeping inside Mal’s car, and she notes that Mal looks golden in this light. She decides to focus on the matter at hand, instead, “You told your mom about us?”

“Dizzy knows about us!” Mal says as she gives her a dirty look, and then, “Besides, my mom and I are close. It’s just the two of us, so… I don’t know, if you don’t wanna come, you don’t have to. But um, it’d be nice if you did. Because my mom wants to meet you.”

Evie nods slowly, “No, yeah, I’ll come. It’s just… well, it’s just that the more people that know, the harder it is to manage. You have to keep your lies restricted to as few people as possible.”

Mal eyes her weirdly, “How do you know so much about that stuff?”

Evie shrugs, “I don’t know, my mom’s a lawyer. You pick up on a few things.”

Mal nods slowly, and Evie thinks she looks pretty when she’s amused.

Not that it matters. But, you know.

-

Later that day, when the sun’s beginning to set and Evie’s fresh out of the shower and in a comfortable sweater and jean shorts and ready to tackle her homework, there’s a knock on her front door and Evie sighs, puts her pen down and moves from her place at the kitchen counter to answer it.

When she opens the door, she’s only mildly surprised to see Audrey standing in front of her, her hands clasped on her back as she stands almost nervous and uncertain in front of Evie.

Audrey’s never looked nervous and uncertain in front of Evie before. And Evie hates that she’d been the one to put that look on her face, to make her second guess herself – their friendship. It’s just so… _complicated._

It’s so complicated, and Evie finds herself wondering if she’s the one overcomplicating things for herself.

“Hey,” Audrey says after a second, and her tone is quiet, “Can we talk now?”

Evie nods, and just as she begins to sign for Audrey to come in, Audrey turns around and sits on the steps of their front porch. Evie smiles slightly at that, remembering the countless times that they’ve done that before, and she follows Audrey’s movements.

They sit together side by side, and Evie waits for Audrey to talk. The other brunette is looking at the car parked in their driveway that had belonged to Ben and was now technically Evie’s, even if the girl didn’t exactly drive it, and she has a thoughtful expression on her face as she says, “I bet you’re secretly relieved you don’t have to drive anymore.”

“Huh?” Evie asks, confused, and Audrey gives her a knowing smile that looks a little sad.

“I know you, you hate driving.” She says, “I bet you’re happy you have the excuse not to.”

Evie understands then, and nods, “Yeah, I guess I am.”

She hadn’t really thought about that before. But she guesses that’s the truth – she had asked Mal to drive her and Dizzy to school and back at first just to have an excuse not to drive them herself. If she recalls correctly, that had been an idea coined by the younger girl, even.

“You know if you ever need a ride, you can call me, right?”

Evie nods again. She does know that. But it’s just – _complicated._

“I know you have Mal now, and that’s fine, but I live right next door,” Audrey says, as if reminding Evie. As if she thought the girl forgot. When Evie doesn’t say anything, she sighs, “Look, I want to say something to you, but I feel weird bringing it up. And that’s weird, too, because we’ve always been able to talk about things.”

“We can still talk to each other,” Evie says, lies, “Nothing’s changed,” she does it again.

Audrey watches her for a moment before she nods and exhales before saying, “I feel like you’ve been ignoring me since…” She trails off, pauses, gulps. Evie waits, bracing herself for the rest of it, and then Audrey finishes, “Since Ben and I broke up.”

Evie feels her heart dropping. That’s it? That’s what Audrey thinks? That Evie’s been avoiding her because of her break up with Ben? Did her letter really make that little of an impact?

Evie tries to keep her face expressionless as she says, “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve just been busy.”

“With Mal, I know. I get it,” Audrey says, and she’s silent for a moment before she continues, “You’re… you’re one of my best friends, Evie. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

The ‘too’ is what clicks everything together for Evie. It’s what makes her understand. The ‘too’ makes it clear to her that Audrey meant the three of them – Ben, her, and Audrey -, if she hadn’t said ‘too’, it would’ve been about the two of them – Audrey and Evie.

Audrey seems to catch Evie’s train of thought, because the next thing she says isn’t something Evie feels like discussing anymore, “About the letter you wrote…”

Evie shakes her head, “I’ll always be your friend, Audrey.”

Audrey nods, and the look in her eyes tells Evie that she appreciates that, but she’s not about to let Evie change the subject now, “Did you mean what you wrote in the letter?”

Evie bites her lips and exhales, “I don’t know, it was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry, please don’t think I’m pressuring you or anything, I’m just… I’m just trying to understand here.”

“It’s okay,” Evie bites her lip and then, “There’s – there’s just nothing to understand. Look, it was a mistake. You shouldn’t have never even seen that.”

“But I did see it,” Audrey says softly, “I just… I just want to know what you want me to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just… I mean, I haven’t talked about it with Ben, of course. But the things you wrote… Look, can I be completely honest with you?”

“Please.”

“Okay. I just… I feel like I’m in this weird place with you and Ben and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I haven’t talked to Ben, obviously, we haven’t even talked much lately,” She adds with a sad laugh, and then she continues, “On one hand, I feel like I’m betraying Ben if I talk to you about it, if I acknowledge what I read. But on the other, I feel like I’m being a bad friend if I don’t acknowledge your feelings and pretend I didn’t read what I read.”

Evie understands then. She understands that Audrey wasn’t in an easy situation on her end either. She bites her lip, and she thinks about what she could say to make this better. Minutes pass, and Evie thinks she’s got it. It’s not a solution by any means, and it’s not exactly helpful, but it’s a start.

“You asked me if I meant what I wrote,” She speaks up, and Audrey nods, expectant. Evie continues, “I can’t answer that yet. I don’t know how to.”

Audrey nods, and then, “Can we still be friends while you figure it out?”

Evie smiles and nods, and hopes she figures it out soon.

//

“So, Mal tells me you were born in Colombia,” Mrs. Faery – _Maleficent, she’d insisted Evie called her_ – says, and Evie thinks that she looks like Mal when she smiles. She nods, and the older woman continues, “Do you visit your family back there often? I’ve always wanted to go but never had the chance.”

Evie opens her mouth to answer her, but before she could, Mal does. She looks at her mother when she speaks carefully, “Mom, I told you Evie’s, um…”

“ _Oh!_ Right.” She says, embarrassment crossing her face, “I’m so sorry, Evie, I –“

“It’s okay,” Evie waves her off, giving her a smile, “It happens more often than you’d think. But to answer your question, I do visit often, just not um, family. We spend our family vacations there, sometimes.”

It’s true – ever since she was little, Adam and Belle would make great effort in helping Evie keep in touch with her own heritage. Either by learning how to speak in Spanish, or learning how to prepare traditional dishes or learning more about the people and its culture, they’ve always made sure that Evie felt like she had a connection to her roots.

Maleficent smiles, “That’s wonderful. Do you have recommendations about places I should visit if I ever do end up visiting the country?”

Evie perks up, then, always happy to share stories about her home country. Maleficent looks genuinely interested and entertained about the stories, asking questions when it’s pertinent and humming all in the right places, and when she excuses herself from the table to go get the dessert, Mal has this different look in her eyes when she turns to Evie.

“What?” Evie asks, self-consciously.

Mal shakes her head before she says, “nothing,” quietly.

-

On the drive back home, Mal speaks up, “Hey, I’m sorry about what my mom said to you. I told her about your family, but –“

“It’s okay,” Evie says quickly, and then she continues, her tone soft and expression thoughtful, “Honestly, you know, it’s nice talking about it like it’s normal. Like my life isn’t some tragedy.”

Mal gives her a thoughtful nod, then, and they’re in comfortable silence before a thought strikes in Evie’s mind.

“Hey, Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“Never mind.”

“What?” Mal presses, “Just ask.”

“Okay, just… is it weird? Not having your dad around.”

Mal licks her lips before she answers, “It’s not as weird as it used to be.”

“Do you see him often?”

“No.” She states simply.

Evie nods. “Do you… do you miss him?”

She half expects Mal to snap at her for asking all these questions, and she’s relieved and somewhat surprised when the girl answers her, “Sometimes. When I walk around the house and see that he’s not in any photos anymore,” she says, and then, “that’s when I really miss him.”

Mal doesn’t seem like she’s finished, so Evie waits for her to continue, “But then I think about everything he’s doing with his new family that he used to do with us, like… like come to my games, or, you know, help me with my cameras and all that stuff, and I get so… so mad that I’m glad he’s gone.”

Mal shrugs and glances at Evie before glancing back at the road, and Evie notices the way Mal’s knuckles are white, her grip on to the steering wheel a little too hard.

“You don’t mean that,” Evie states softly, not meaning to anger the girl. When Mal’s quiet, she continues, “You can be mad at someone and still miss them.”

Mal’s quiet for a moment as she focuses on the road ahead of them, and Evie notices that her grip on the wheel has lessened somewhat and her posture doesn’t look as stiff as it did before.

“Do you miss your mom?” Mal asks after a moment. Evie glances at her before answering.

“I don’t know. Not really. I mean, it’s complicated,” Evie says, and Mal waits, “Sometimes I don’t even think about her at all. I was too young to really… remember. Sometimes I wonder if the memories I have of her are even real. Like… like her voice, and her scent. I wonder if I just made them up in my head,” Evie shakes her head when she finds herself getting lost in thought, “Sometimes I don’t think about her at all, and then… and then I’ll just… Wonder. Where she is, if she’s okay, if she’s managed to make it. Wonder if she’d like me, what she’d think of me.  If she saw me in the streets, would she recognize me?”

“Of course she would, she’s your mom.”

“No, Belle’s my mom.” Evie corrects her with a small smile, “She brought me to the world, but _Belle_ is my mom. She raises me and takes care of me and is there for me at the end of the day. But I understand what you mean.”

Mal is looking at her in silence, and there’s something about the look in her eyes that makes Evie say because she feels like she should - “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“I mean, in some ways, I think I get it,” Mal says quietly, and Evie thinks that Mal’s never really talked about this with anyone else, either, “I don’t actually hate my dad.”

The tone in her voice makes Evie smile, “I know.”

They’re quiet again, and it’s comfortable and it’s –

“It’s actually really nice having someone to talk to about this stuff,” Evie says, and Mal nods silently, as if agreeing, “You’re a good listener.”

Mal gives her one of those teasing smiles, but it’s soft and nice and it’s not like the ones she’s given Evie before as she says, “Yeah? Why, thank you.”

Evie chuckles and they smile at each other, and then, “You are too.”

“Thanks.” Evie smiles.

“You’re welcome.”

And then they’re silent again, and Evie notices that Mal had stopped the car minutes ago and they’re now in her driveway. She smiles.

Right before Evie gets out of the car, Mal says, “I can tell that my mom liked you,” and something about her tone and about that information makes Evie feel good inside.

//

Being with Mal was so easy, that sometimes she let herself pretend it wasn’t fake.

//

Mal comes into her house one afternoon after dropping her and Dizzy off so her and Evie can finally have their double feature of Sixteen Candles and Fight Club, Dizzy deciding that she was going to tag along even if she hadn’t exactly been invited – and Evie thinks that her younger sister just missed having these moments. After Ben left and Audrey stopped hanging around the house for… other reasons besides not being Ben’s girlfriend anymore, their movie nights hadn’t really been the same with just the two of them.

So Dizzy is lying on her stomach as she watches the movie, and Mal’s munching on the popcorn that Evie had made for them earlier and watching the movie with a bored look on her face.

“Seriously, you like this movie?” Mal asks midway through it, and Evie sighs. This is the tenth time Mal had asked the same question.

“Yes, Mal, I do. Now shush.”

Mal hums, and she’s quiet for another moment before she speaks up again, “Sorry, but… seriously? Why do you like this movie?”

“Oh my God, because it’s a classic!” Dizzy answers, clearly having lost her patience, and Evie laughs when Mal sends an offended look towards her younger sister.

“Hey, what’s with the attitude? I thought we were friends,” Mal says, mock offended, and Dizzy giggles.

“You’re being _annoying_.” She says, and Evie watches in amusement as Mal gasps and grabs one of the throw pillows beside her, and she knows what’s about to happen before Mal even says it. She thinks Dizzy does as well, because her little sister sits up quickly and covers her face with her arms before Mal even shouts “incoming!” and throws the pillow at her.

Dizzy chuckles when the pillow barely makes it past her head, and her eyes shine in mischief as she grabs one of the pillows around her and kneels on the couch and begins to hit Mal repeatedly with it, the blonde grunting and laughing and trying to defend herself from the eleven year old’s attack.

Evie smiles softly as she watches them tire each other out with their pillow fight and soon enough Dizzy was throwing herself at Mal instead of her pillows and the blonde was trying to tickle her and make her laugh.

And then Evie’s smile dissipates as a sudden concern hits her, and she bites her lip when she realizes that maybe Dizzy shouldn’t be getting too attached to Mal. This was temporary.  The way Dizzy looks at Mal, so adoringly, like she’s one of her favorite people in the world… it’d break Evie’s heart to take that away from her little sister. She knows that Dizzy misses Audrey, even if she doesn’t say it. And she can’t help but blame herself for driving Audrey away from them, from her. She can’t have that happen with Mal, too.

So, that night, when Mal has to leave, Evie walks with her to her car. And before she gets in, she says, “I don’t think you should come over anymore. It’s confusing to Dizzy.”

Mal frowns, and Evie can’t help but notice that she also looks hurt as she says, “How is it confusing to Dizzy?”

“Because when our… when our thing is over, she’s going to miss you. Like she misses… Um, like she misses Audrey.”

Mal nods, and she thinks for a moment as she glances back at Evie’s house from over Evie’s shoulder. There’s something about Mal’s expression that Evie can’t exactly read, and the brunette finds that there have been a lot of moments like these lately.

“I’ll still see her around,” Mal says finally, and then, “I want joint custody.”

And then suddenly all Evie can think about is how patient Mal is with Dizzy, how sweet. She thinks about how much Mal makes Dizzy laugh, and about how much Dizzy makes Mal laugh – and Evie can’t really help herself by how she reacts. Impulsively, Evie leans down slightly and pecks Mal’s cheek, and the blonde jerks back in surprise.

“What was that for?” She asks, and there’s the ghost of a smile on her lips.

Evie’s cheeks are red when she answers, “For being so nice to Dizzy.”

Mal nods, and then Evie waves her goodbye quickly and rushes back inside her house, missing it when Mal grins and takes her hand to her cheek before shaking her head and getting in her car.

//

At dinner one night, Evie gets a text from Mal. The blonde’s telling her she’d be a few minutes late tomorrow to pick them up from school because she has to drive her mother to work, and Adam speaks up.

“No phones at the dinner table, Evie.” The tone in his voice is teasing, but Evie knows enough to know that he means it.

She puts her phone facedown beside her plate and says, “Sorry.”

Dizzy grins and turns to him and says, “I bet it was a text from Mal.”

“Mal?” Belle asks curiously as she takes a sip of her wine, and Dizzy nods. “Who’s Mal?”

“Evie’s gir-“

“Friend. My friend.” Evie sends a warning look to Dizzy, and the younger girl frowns at her confusedly. She had forgotten to ask Dizzy to not mention anything about Mal and her and being girlfriends to her parents. She’d have to remember to do that later.

Belle and Adam don’t seem to notice the slip-up or the exchange, and if they do it doesn’t show. Adam’s piercing a cherry tomato from his plate as he says, “I like Mal.”

“You do?” Evie asks.

Adam nods, “She’s a good kid. I hear she’s spunky and an excellent lacrosse player.”

“You do?” Evie repeats, and he nods.

“Oh, yeah,” Then, he turns to Belle, “Mal’s Maleficent’s daughter. Remember?”

The woman thinks for a second before she nods, “Oh! Yes, I remember now. Poor dear, I remember when her father left them a few years ago. It was so hard on them. How are they doing, Evie?” She looks at her daughter curiously.

“Um, they’re fine,” Evie says, and then she licks her lips, “They’ve adjusted.”

“Oh, that’s good to hear.” Belle says, and her tone is so genuine it makes Evie smile.

“Mal seems to be really taken with you, Evie.” Adam says just when Evie’s about to change the subject. Belle raises a curious eyebrow to her daughter.

Evie blinks, “Taken with me?”

“Why do you keep repeating everything he says?” Dizzy asks her, and then she turns to Adam, “What does that mean? ‘Taken with her’?”

“It means she’s smitten.” Adam explains.

“Oh,” And then, “What does smitten mean?”

Their parents chuckle at her and Adam ruffles Dizzy’s hair fondly before he responds, “It means she likes Evie.”

“Oh,” Dizzy nods thoughtfully, “She definitely likes Evie. It’s kind of gross, daddy. You should see it, she’s always looking at Evie. Like, the other day right? Mal drove us to the store after school because I had to get those extra school supplies, and Mal kept looking at Evie the whole time to see if Evie was having a good time.”

Belle and Adam smile softly at that, and Evie finds herself mirroring their smiles as she feels warmth starting to spread on her chest.

“She did?” She asks, just for kicks.

Dizzy frowns, “Seriously, what’s up with you and repeating things today? You sound like a parrot.”

//

They announce that Auradon High is hosting a Model UN scrimmage that weekend one day during morning announcements, and Evie gets an idea that doesn’t leave her head until lunch. Jenny Parker used to be the Model UN president in middle school. Evie wonders if she’s still in her school’s team.

She brings it up to Mal during lunch, before any of their friends sit down with them.

They’re the only ones on the table, and Mal’s playing with Evie’s fingers absentmindedly when Evie asks, “Do you know if Jenny Parker still does Model UN?”

It’s a long-shot, she knows, but she’s curious and she guesses a part of her wanted to know what Mal’s reaction to that would be. The blonde gives her a funny look, “How should I know?”

“I don’t know. I was just wondering.”

“Why?” Mal asks, and Evie notices that she hasn’t let go of her hand yet. Mal’s been doing that a lot lately – playing with her fingers, or holding her hand, and some days she’ll give Evie two notes instead of one.

Evie hadn’t really paid attention to the notes, if she’s honest. Sometimes she’ll even forget she has them on her until she mistakes the pieces of folder paper in her pockets for dollar bills, and she’ll just absent-mindedly throw them in the trash bin in her room without a second thought. She doesn’t mention it to Mal, though, because for some reason she thinks the girl would be hurt by that. But then again, this whole notes thing was just to piss CJ off in the first place, so it’s not like they were actually for real.

(But she still lies whenever Mal asks her if she’s read her notes).

“I think maybe I’m going to the Model UN scrimmage this weekend. I have a feeling that she’ll be there.” She says finally.

“For real?” Mal asks, “If she is, what are you gonna do?”

Mal sounds genuinely curious, so Evie shrugs, “I don’t know. Haven’t really thought that far into it. Maybe I’ll go up to her, maybe I won’t. I just wanna see how she turned out.”

“We can look her up online right now if you want,” Mal offers, beginning to reach for her phone in her pocket, “Parker, right?”

Evie shakes her head, “That would be cheating. I want to see her with my own eyes. I wanna be surprised.”

Mal makes a noise, “Well, don’t ask me to come with you to keep you company. There’s no way I’m wasting an entire Saturday on Model UN.”

“I wasn’t really planning on asking you to come with me.”

Mal looks hurt by that. “Why not?”

“I just wanna do this by myself.”

There’s something in Mal’s eyes when she says, “Wow, and the body isn’t even cold yet.”

“Huh?”

“You’re a player, King.” Mal says, and those words bring memories to Evie’s mind. She wonders if Mal did it on purpose. A blast from the past, and all that. By the smirk on her face, Evie thinks she did. “We’re not even broken up and you already wanna talk to other girls. I would be hurt if I wasn’t so impressed.”

That makes Evie roll her eyes and smile, and that’s how their friends find them a few seconds later. Carlos and Harry ask Evie to settle a debate for them with her opinion as Jay and Uma pick sides, and Evie’s so amused by their antics that she doesn’t notice it when Mal spends the entire lunch time watching her with a weird look on her face.

-

Saturday morning comes quickly, and Evie finds herself walking into her school going over what she’s going to say in case she sees Jenny again. Should she keep it casual? Should she sound excited? Maybe like she doesn’t care? It’s been a few years since she’s seen Jenny. What if she doesn’t recognize her?

Evie scans the board in the lobby and finds that Jenny is listed there under General Assembly, representing Italy.

The General Assembly is meeting in the auditorium, and there are desks set up for each delegate, and on stage there is a podium and a girl in a black suit is making a speech about something Evie doesn’t really pay much attention to as she slips to the back of the room with her arms crossed and looks for Jenny. There are so many people in the room, and everyone’s facing the front, so it makes Evie’s job much harder.

A kid in a suit turns around in the chair in front of Evie and whispers to her while he holds up a piece of paper, “Are you a page?”

“Um…” Evie’s not entirely sure what to say to that, not really remembering what a page was supposed to be. But then, from the corner of her eyes, she sees a girl walking around the room delivering notes to people and it jogs her memory.

Before she can give the boy an actual answer, he’s thrusting the piece of paper at her and turning back around and facing the front of the room again. Evie looks down at the piece of paper and reads that the note is addressed to Japan, from the USA. She pauses for a moment before shrugging and deciding she might as well go with it. She looks around the room for a moment before she locates Japan, and she walks towards a guy in a tie and hands him the note silently. When she starts making her way back to the back of the room to resume her search, she realizes that other people are raising their hands with notes for her to deliver to other people as well. She sighs and decides to just go with it.

As she delivers another note to someone, she notices a girl raising her hand for her to pick up her note, so she hurries forward and then the girl is turning her head slightly and Evie almost gasps.

Jenny Parker’s hair is wavy, long and blonde – and a tiny voice in Evie’s mind tells her that it’s the wrong shade of blonde, not platinum enough -, and she’s dressed in a light blue sweater that looks really soft, and she looks so serious, focused, that Evie thinks Jenny is pretending she’s a real delegate and this isn’t pretend. She’s holding the piece of paper out to Evie as she takes notes with her head down, her hair pulled up at the sides so it doesn’t fall on her face, and when Evie reaches for it and closes her fingers around the paper, Jenny looks up and does a double take.

“Hi,” Evie whispers, her hands still holding on to the note on her side as Jenny holds on to hers.

“Hi.” Jenny whispers back. She blinks, and then she’s letting go of the paper and Evie’s hurrying away, her heart pounding in her ears. She thinks she hears Jenny call out her name in a loud whisper, but she doesn’t slow down.

She looks down at the paper in her hands. Jenny’s handwriting is neat. Evie delivers her note to France, and then she ignores Australia who’s waving a note at her and walks right out of the auditorium’s double doors and into the sunlight.

So. She just saw Jenny Parker. After all those years, she saw her again. And Jenny knew her. Right away, she knew who Evie was. Evie wonders if she’s gotten her letter (and then she wonders again, not for the second or third or tenth time, who the hell sent those out in the first place).

Evie gets a text from Mal almost an hour later, and she opens it to see that the blonde was asking her if she’d seen Jenny yet. She’s at home now, and she types back that _yes, I did,_ before she hesitates and deletes it before she hits send. She types _no, I didn’t,_ and she’s not sure why she does it. She thinks she wants to keep this for herself, be happy just knowing that Jenny remembered her, and have that be enough.

(A tiny voice in Evie’s brain tells her that Jenny’s eyes were the wrong shade. They were blue, not green.)

She hits send.

//

Weeks go by, and weeks turn into months, and before they know it, it’s December, and they’ve been doing this for way longer than Evie expected. It’s come to a point that the brunette starts to wonder why she’s even doing it in the first place – why they’re still doing it.

She and Audrey are still walking on eggshells around each other, and Evie hates every second of it and wishes they could just go back to the way they were before everything that’s happened, but they’re trying and Evie doesn’t feel the need to lie to Audrey about Mal anymore. But then she’ll think about breaking things off with Mal, about stopping this thing between them, and her chest will feel heavy and her throat will close up and then she’ll remember that Mal’s doing this for CJ, and then she’ll have this bittersweet moment in which she’ll be glad that there’s still a reason why they’re doing this – to keep doing this, and she’ll also feel… weird, because Mal’s doing this to get CJ back.

And then Evie will wonder if Mal’s still interested in getting back with CJ. The blonde hasn’t really mentioned the other girl in a few weeks, and she doesn’t really look around them to make sure that she’s around before she hands Evie her notes anymore. Then Evie will quickly push that thought away, because that’s always a dangerous path to go down.

(But she still wonders.)

//

Carlos and Harry are leaning against her locker after third period on a Monday morning, and Evie eyes them curiously as she approaches the two boys, smiling amusedly when Harry fishes a Cheeto out of the full sized bag of Cheetos that he’s holding in his hand and tries to throw it inside the other boy’s mouth, both of them laughing when Harry misses it. The corner of both of their mouths look slightly orange, and Evie’s chuckling when she stops near them.

“How charming,” She says as a greeting, and she raises her eyebrows when they both turn to her and immediately open their mouths to begin to say whatever they had to say to her together, “Before anything, please wipe your mouths. You two look like children.”

“Look, there’s something we gotta tell you,” Carlos says as he wipes his mouth, and Harry nods at him to go on when Carlos turns to him quickly as if to see who should go first. He licks his lips before he says, “Okay. So, you know how I live in the same street as CJ?”

She didn’t know that, but she nods anyway. Carlos continues, “Last night I was walking my dog and I, um… “ He gulps, and then he exhales, “I saw Mal leaving her house.”

“Oh.” That’s all Evie can say.

“And normally I wouldn’t think it’s that big of a deal, but there’s one more thing that I didn’t know until I brought it up with Harry this morning…” He trails off and looks at the boy beside him. Harry sighs.

“Ye know Harriet and CJ are still tight, right?” Harry begins. _That_ Evie knew. Harriet was Harry’s older sister who was away at college. She’d always give Evie crown braids whenever she visited. Harry continues, “Harriet told me that CJ and the college girl she was datin’ broke up last week. I didn’t think anything of it and didn’t think it’d even matter until Carlos told me what he saw last night. Ye know what this means, right?”

“Yeah,” Evie nods, but she’s not exactly sure what it means. She’s not even sure what she’s even feeling at the moment, to be completely honest. She frowns and stops her head movements, ”Wait, what does it mean?”

Carlos groans impatiently, “CJ’s gonna try and get Mal back, Evie!”

“Right,” Evie feels a pang in her chest as she says it, “Yeah. Yeah, she will.”

“Don’t let her.” Harry says, and he’s looking at Evie with a concerned expression.

“I won’t.” Evie says, but there’s no conviction in her voice.

After all, this is the moment they were counting down to all along, wasn’t it? The moment that CJ would want Mal back. The moment Mal would figure out that this was fun and all, but it was time for her to wrap this whole thing up and go back to the person she belongs with. To the person she belongs to.

(That tiny voice that Evie’s grown so accustomed to reminds her that one implied Mal had a choice; the other doesn’t.)

-

Evie’s wondering if by the time Mal’s back with CJ and her and Evie are just a distant memory, Uma and Jay would still want to be her friends. She hopes so, and she thinks they will – they are, after all, Carlos and Harry’s… whatever it is that they were. And Carlos and Harry were _her_ friends.

Evie’s thinking about how she’s going to miss having lunch with them – the entire gang. With Mal. About how much she’s going to miss her car rides with Mal. Spending time with Mal. _Mal._

Evie’s thinking about all of this while she makes her way towards the locker room after school that same day, where she knows that Mal would be in, probably about to finish up getting dressed after showering after practice to meet Evie by her car so they can drive home. Evie thinks it’d be better to have that conversation there, and not in Mal’s car.

(A part of Evie knows that she just doesn’t want to ruin the memories she has of Mal’s car – of laughter and teasing banters and serious, deep conversations about things that they’ve never shared with anyone else but each other before – with what she’s about to do.)

The locker room’s empty save from Mal, and Evie finds the blonde sitting on one of the benches as she ties her shoelaces. She has on high waisted jeans and a black cropped top, and the bomber jacket she has on makes her look extra small. Evie’s heart tugs a little at that image, and she shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts from any endeared thoughts of the blonde in front of her.

When Mal sees her, she smiles and puts her leg down and crosses her feet in front of her, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

She sounds happy to see her, and that makes Evie’s heart squeeze painfully as she says, “I’m here to break-up with you. Fake break-up, I mean.”

Mal’s smile instantly drops and she’s on her feet in a second, “What are you talking about?”

Her tone is almost panicked, and Evie forces her words out, “Look, Mal, I don’t think either one of us thought this was going to go on for this long, but… But Audrey and I are cool, and CJ’s jealous and we both managed to save face and Ben will be home soon and he –” She stops.

“And you still haven’t told him, right?” Mal asks, and her tone is different than anything she’s heard from the girl before.

Evie shakes her head, “No, and I don’t want him to know about this. Because then I’d have to explain everything to him, and it’d complicate things all over again. Everything is as it’s supposed to be, and I think that we need to call it.”

Mal’s silent for a moment, and Evie waits for the blonde to finally say something. When she does, her voice is hoarse and heavy with something Evie still can’t recognize, but she thinks it sounds almost desperate, “I can’t believe you’re trying to break up with me before the ski trip. That’s in the contract!”

Truth be told, Evie wasn’t even thinking about it. In fact, she barely even remembered that that was a thing until someone mentioned it around her. But that still doesn’t stop her from saying, “Only if we’re still together.”

“We _are_ still together!” Mal exclaims, and before Evie could say anything, she continues, “You’re just trying to pull out because you’re scared.”

“What do I have to be scared about?” There’s no reason for her to be scared. They’re just pretending.

Mal shrugs and looks so deep into her eyes that Evie thinks Mal might as well see right through her and into her soul when she says, “You tell me, Evie.”

Evie doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell Mal anything. Because how do you even tell someone you’re fake dating that you can’t go skiing with them because you’re starting to have real feelings and you know that if you don’t walk away now, you know you’re only setting yourself up for a massive heartbreak?

You can’t. So you pivot.

“Fine,” Evie says finally, and then she adds, “But I’ll only go if Harry goes.”

-

When she gets home the next day, Harry’s already waiting for her in the kitchen as he talks with her father, throwing an apple up and down as he chuckles at whatever her father had just told him.

“Hey guys!” She greets, throwing her school bag on the couch and then taking off her jacket, and Adam picks up his mug as he begins to walk out of the room, knowing that Harry was there to talk to his daughter and wanting to give them some privacy.

“Hi, honey,” He greets as he walks past her, and he leans down to deposit a kiss on top of her head as he moves towards the staircase and Harry gets off the kitchen counter – which was something that Evie’s mother had chided him for many times before – and walks towards the couch.

“So, what’s up?” Harry begins, throwing himself on the couch and taking a bite out of the red fruit in his hand, “Why’s yer girlfriend harassing me since yesterday about comin’ on the ski trip? Ye know I don’t do school functions.”

Evie sighs and throws herself on the couch beside him, tucking her feet under her as she turns her whole body to the boy, “Yes, and that’s why I told her I would only go if you would, knowing that you _wouldn’t_.”

Harry frowns and sits up, “Wait… Evie, ye have to go! Did ye not hear me and Carlos yesterday? CJ’s definitely gonna make a move on Mal if ye stay home!”

“So let her,” Evie shrugs one shoulder, “I’m sick of having her little snake eyes on me all the time.”

“What the – Evie, no!” Harry groans, as if he couldn’t believe his ears, “CJ’s always gettin’ whatever she wants and it’s bullshit,” when Evie only hums in response, he continues, “Ye get Mal. I’ll make sure of it. I’m comin’ on that trip.”

Evie gives him a look, “You know I’m really tired of you using me to get back at CJ.”

The boy rolls his eyes and takes another bite of his apple before he answers, “It’s not just that. Since ye’ve been with Mal… well, I don’t know, Evie. I’ve never seen ye so happy. And… ye know, Uma’s gonna be there. So, all the more reason for me to go.” He winks, and Evie knows that he only added that last part to ease the emotional load caused by his prior statement up.

“Honey, he’s right,” her father speaks up from behind them, and Evie and Harry turn around on the couch to find Adam sitting on the bottom steps of the stairs, his coffee mug in his hands, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I’ve never seen you have this much fun before. Going to parties, making new friends… You made your old man very happy, you know?”

Evie smiles at him, and he’s grinning when he stands up and actually makes his way upstairs like he’d pretended to do before. Harry and Evie look at each other then, and Harry’s grinning when he takes another bite of his apple before raising his eyebrows once.

“That was kind of sweet.” He says after a moment, and when Evie only rolls her eyes and grins, he chuckles.

//

At six thirty in the morning the day of the ski trip, Adam drops Evie off at school. The weather is freezing and the sky is grey and it’s barely even light out. Before Evie hops out of the car, Adam turns to her and asks, “Did you get everything you’ll need?”

Evie nods. She’d packed for the trip with the help of her mother, so she highly doubts there’s anything missing. Adam nods, and then, “Please promise me you’ll go out on the slopes at least once.”

She probably won’t because she hates the cold and she’s packed many of her books to spend time reading during the trip, but for her dad’s sake she says, “I promise.”

Adam smiles, “I’m so glad you’re doing this. Having actual fun and being social instead of just stressing over school.”

“That’s such a strange thing for a parent to say. Are you sure you mean that?” Evie squints teasingly and Adam chuckles.

“You know what I mean. I love that you’re such a dedicated student, but I’d also love it if you could let your hair down every once in a while.”

“I’ve been wearing my hair down lately, haven’t you noticed?”

“I didn’t mean literally.” Adam rolls his eyes, “I swear, you’re just like your mother.”

That warms Evie’s heart to hear, and she smiles at her father as she says, “Thanks for the ride, dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She gives him a peck on the cheek and then grabs her duffel bag, and the last thing she hears before she closes the door is her father telling her to zip up her coat. She does as told and watches his car drive off before she turns around and makes her way to the side of the bus, where a few of her classmates are already chatting animatedly with each other about the trip. She spots Mal and Uma standing beside each other as Uma reads something from the clipboard in her hands – she’d been the designated chaperone on this trip and the mere thought of that is kind of terrifying – and Mal says something to Uma that makes the girl roll her eyes and hit her with the clipboard softly.

Mal sees her almost immediately and gestures at her to come over. Uma walks away when someone calls for her name a few steps ahead before Evie could get to them, and when she does Mal takes the duffel bag from her shoulder and puts it next to hers. “I’ll put this on the bus.” She tells her.

“It’s freezing,” Evie says, hugging her body and her teeth beginning to clatter.

The blonde pulls Evie to her and puts her arms around her, “I’ll keep you warm.”

Evie looks at Mal and is about to tease her about being cheesy when she notices that Mal’s attention is elsewhere. Following her line of sight, she notices that CJ is looking at them. When Mal snuggles closer to her, Evie pulls away.

“What’s with you?” Mal frowns.

“Nothing.” Evie says.

A few minutes later when the students are in a line to file in the bus and Uma’s at the front, her clipboard in hand as she checks if everyone’s there as they get in, CJ, who’d been standing behind Mal and Evie and Harry speaks up, “Did Harry even sign up for this trip?”

Harry only glances at her, completely unbothered by his cousin’s questioning, and Evie rolls her eyes when CJ continues, “I know for a fact that you didn’t sign up. Why are you here?”

“Can ye mind yer own business?” Harry grumbles. His eyes are barely open and Evie knows for a fact that he’s only minutes away from sleeping while standing up.

“It’s my business that I had to make a deposit for this trip, and you most likely didn’t because I know you didn’t sign up. I saw the list yesterday and your name wasn’t on it.”

Mal rolls her eyes, “Just leave it alone. You’re not even chaperoning this trip. Uma is.”

“And Uma’s Harry’s girlfriend, so –“

“So what I say is law,” Uma interrupts from the front, “I’ve already discussed this with Mrs. Merryweather. She said it was cool that Harry got one of the last spots.”

CJ makes an unhappy face and Harry grins, “See what happens when ye stick yer nose in things that aren’t of yer business?”

“I still think this is unfair.”

“That’s not my problem.” Harry shrugs, and then he grins at Uma, “Ye ready for the best bus ride of yer life?”

She gives him an apologetic grin, “Charming. But sorry, I’m not gonna be sitting next to you. Because I’m the student chaperone I gotta sit next to Mrs. Merryweather and talk schedules and all that boring stuff with her,” Uma tells him. When he makes a face, she continues, “But we get to sit together on the ride back. So I’mma be ready for the best bus ride of my life then.”

Evie smiles at the two of them and Harry grins happily before he practically skips inside the bus. Mal walks in next and then it’s Evie, and the brunette watches as Mal slides into one of the seats in the middle of the bus and frowns when Evie shuffles forward, towards the seat where Harry is sitting, his jacket thrown over his body like a blanket and his head resting on the window, probably already asleep.

“Hey,” Mal says, surprised, “You’re not sitting with me?”

“I’m sitting with Harry,” Evie tells her and tries to move forward, but Mal grabs her arm as she stands.

“Are you serious? You have to sit with me,” Mal looks around furtively and lowers her voice, “You’re my girlfriend, remember?”

Evie shakes her off, “We’re breaking things off soon, remember? It’ll make it more realistic.”

Mal’s still frowning when Evie slides into the seat next to Harry. Then, CJ walks into the bus and slides down into the seat next to Mal, and when Evie turns her head from the scene she finds Harry shaking his head at her.

“Ye did that,” He tells her.

“For you!” She lies. Evie’s not sure why she did that – maybe she’s just tired of all this. Of being someone’s girlfriend but not really. Harry gives her a look, “What? It’s true. You’re here because of me and I know you wanted to sit with Uma so I just couldn’t let you sit by yourself.”

“That’s a load of bullshit,” Harry comments and stretches, “I know that, ye know that. If I were ye, I’d be careful. My cousin’s a barracuda.”

Evie frowns as she looks back towards Mal’s seat and watches as CJ whispers something in Mal’s ear. She can’t see Mal’s face from this angle, and it makes her want to die a little. Harry shuffles on his seat and yawns and then he’s resting his head on Evie’s shoulder and falling asleep right away.

//

Harry’s in a better mood when they get to the ski lodge. He’d woken up halfway through the bus ride and managed to get Gil, one of his closest friends, to share his snacks with him, so by the time that the bus pulled up in front of the lodge he’d thrown his arm around Evie’s shoulder as they made their way in and towards Uma when she waves them over.

“Alright, so, as you may or may not know, I’m in charge of assigning rooms, so,” She picks up a key from a chain and hands it to Harry, “This is the key for your room and Carlos’. You guys are staying together in a double room.” Harry nods and then Uma turns to Evie, “You’re staying in a triple room with Mal and I, but I can totally disappear for a few hours if you want.” She winks at her, and Evie feels a rush of embarrassment begin to rise to her cheeks. Harry snickers and Uma grins.

“Um, actually…” Evie trails off and Uma waits, “Would it be okay if we switched and I stayed with Harry and Carlos in a triple and you room with Mal? I just, um… I don’t think I’m comfortable with, um, you know…”

“Oh,” She says, and then frowns, “Are you sure?”

Evie licks her lips, “Yeah, I just feel like I’d be more comfortable. And besides, my dad kind of asked Harry to keep a close eye on me, so…”

“Oh, okay. No, yeah, sure, I can do that,” Uma nods, looking down at her clipboard for a second before she looks up at Evie, “But then you’d have to keep it on the low, okay? I’m not supposed to let boys and girls room together. Not that everyone listens, but, you know.”

“No, yeah, of course,” Evie nods, and she feels Harry’s eyes on her after he hands Uma the key back as they make the switch. Uma gives her a smile and tells them she’ll see them later and walks away and Evie turns to meet Harry’s disbelieving eyes.

“What are ye doin’?” Harry asks her finally.

Evie shrugs, “I’m not doing anything.”

“Yer dad never asked me to keep an eye on ye,” Harry shakes his head, “Yer just doin’ this to avoid Mal.”

He’s right on, but Evie still opens her mouth to fight him on that. She doesn’t get to, because CJ’s voice speaks up from the back of the room.

“See you on the Black Diamond, Mal?” She has a smirk on her face as she says this, and Evie feels a pang in her chest when she sees the look in the other girl’s face as she directs her attention to her (fake) girlfriend. A quick glance towards Mal, who’s at the other side of the room talking to Jay shows Evie that Mal’s looking at CJ with an expression she can’t quite recognize. CJ continues, “Last one down the slope owes the other a hot toddy.”

Evie looks back at Mal and finds the blonde looking back at Jay, not giving CJ an answer. The expression on Mal’s face is awkward, Evie decides. Her expression doesn’t let her know if Mal’s planning on taking CJ up on her offer or not.

“Evie, ye need to do somethin’ about this,” Harry says, his tone serious, and he motions with his head towards Mal, “Go get yer girl!”

“Are you kidding?” Evie frowns, “I can’t go down the Black Diamond. I don’t even know how to put on the boots. Which, by the way, are really ugly.”

Harry rolls his eyes but he looks almost amused, even if slightly desperate at his best friend’s behavior, “If yer not gonna ski, what are ye planning on doing all weekend?”

Evie removes her bag from her shoulder and raises her index finger as if telling him to wait for it, “I came prepared.”

Harry watches with an expectant look on his face as Evie dramatically unzips her bag, and then his expectant look turns into an actual horrified look when Evie begins to pull out her favorite books from inside it.

“Oh, no, this is a major backslide for ye,” He groans. Evie smiles proudly and begins to put her books back inside her bag and Carlos comes up beside them.

“So I hear we’re roommates for the weekend,” Carlos says with a smile, and Evie grins at him while Harry wraps his arm around Carlos’ shoulder and pulls him to his side.

“Carlos, can ye help me convince Evie to come ski with us?” Harry asks, and Carlos makes a face before he chuckles.

“Yeah, right. You really think I’m going skiing?” Carlos actually laughs then, “It’s cold outside. I don’t do cold.”

Evie nods along with him, and Harry gives them a disbelieving look as he removes his arm from around the boy’s shoulders, “Are ye two serious?”

When they only look at him, Harry shakes his head and Evie speaks up, “Well, I have beauty products and fashion magazines.”

Carlos slide towards Evie at the same time as Harry squints at her and says, “Ye’ve made some points there. But my future wife is going to be waiting for me at the slopes, so I’ll have to pass.”

Evie smiles, “I hope you have fun.”

“Are ye kiddin’?” Harry snorts, “It’s fuckin’ cold. I’ll be miserable.”

//

“So you guys have been faking it this entire time?” Carlos asks, his voice shocked and surprised. Evie nods from her place on the bed beside his, removing her own face mask as Carlos removes his. Harry is nowhere to be seen – probably still spending time with Uma somewhere in the ski lodge as he’d told them he would.

“Yes, and you have to promise not to tell anyone, okay?” Evie says, and then when she rests the back of her head on the wall behind her and closes her eyes she continues, “It’s just… I’m so confused. Just had to let it out.”

They’re quiet for a moment before Carlos speaks up, “Look, I don’t care about the genesis of it all. I just know that homegirl likes you. I can tell by the way she looks at you.”

Evie sounds disbelieving when she says, “Okay, how does she look at me?”

And Carlos sounds amused when he says, “Like you’re a sexy little Rubik’s Cube. She can’t figure you out, but she’s having fun trying.”

Evie chuckles while Carlos watches her with a smile, and then Evie’s shaking her head and sobering up, “It doesn’t matter. She’s still so hung up on CJ, and I’m just another one of the stupid people who fell for Mal Faery.”

Carlos exhales and closes his eyes, and Evie continues, “It’s embarrassing!”

“Look, everyone gets hung up on their first, you know… love, or whatever. First real relationship,” Carlos says, and Evie waits for him to continue, “But it’s just… Okay, let’s look at the facts, shall we?”

When Evie nods, he continues, “The whole fake relationship was her idea, and you came up with the no-kissing rule, and you’re the one trying to break up with her.” When Evie doesn’t say anything, he says, “And you’re also the one who’s wasting your time carb-loading with me while she’s probably waiting for you in the hot tub.”

Evie blinks. Carlos isn’t finished, and his tone is almost hushed when he says, “So I’d say that if there’s anyone who stupidly fell for somebody who doesn’t like them back, it’s not you,” they meet eyes and Carlos stage-whispers, “It’s Mal.”

There’s a beat, and then, “You think she’s waiting for me in the hot tub?”

“Girl, c’mon. I thought you were supposed to be smart?” Carlos chuckles, and Evie tries not to take offense.


	4. Part 4.

The hot tub is behind the main lodge, tucked in the woods on a wooden platform. Evie’s on her nightgown and a coat while she makes her way there, and some kids from her school with wet hair give her amused smiles when she walks past them. Evie assumes they’re probably making their way back to their dorms before curfew, since their curfew is at eleven and it’s already ten forty-five. There’s not a lot of time left, so Evie hopes that Mal’s still out there. She quickens her pace, and when she gets there she’s pleased to spot Mal alone in the tub, the neon blue light coming from the water giving her an almost otherworldly look as it reflects on her pale skin.

Mal has her head down, and it snaps up towards her direction when Evie says, “All by yourself out here?” and her voice echoes in the woods.

Mal looks at her for a moment in silence, and then she looks back down again, not giving her an answer.

“So what, now you’re ignoring me?” Evie tries again, forcing a light tone to her voice to try and mask how nervous she really is. She hasn’t been this nervous around Mal in a while.

“Oh, I’m the one ignoring you?” Mal seems to consider that and gives her a look that could only be described as a mix of bitter and sarcastic, “That’s funny.”

An uncomfortable silence falls over them as Evie walks around the tub and up the steps so she can sit on the edge of it, and she’s hugging her arms to her chest to keep the cold out and the warm in as she says, avoiding Mal’s eyes, “Sorry I’m not a good skier. You didn’t even offer to teach me.”

She knows it’s a lame excuse. She knows their problems go beyond that.

“Oh, I’m supposed to be sweet to you after you don’t want to sit with me on the bus ride up here?” Mal asks, giving her an incredulous look.

“Shouldn’t you be thanking me that you got to sit next to who you actually wanted?” At Mal’s frown, she says, “Didn’t you want to sit next to CJ?”

“Why do you think I wanted to sit next to her?” Mal asks with that same frown, and then, “Why are you always bringing her up?”

“Aren’t you in love with her? Isn’t that why we’re doing this?” Evie’s confused herself, now. Mal shakes her head and gives an incredulous chuckle.

“For someone who has such good grades, you can be so slow sometimes. And that’s coming from me, so like, you should probably get that checked,” Mal shakes her head again and meets her green eyes with Evie’s brown ones, “I wanted to sit next to you, Evie. I even packed the snacks. I asked Dizzy where I could find your favorite flavor of those yogurt smoothie drinks you two like so much. I even dropped by the corner cafe last night to get those muffins you love for the trip. For us.”

Evie doesn’t know what to say. So she asks, a little surprised, “You did?”

“Yeah,” Mal nods slowly, and then, “So if I did all of that to get you things you like, then that means…”

Mal trails off and looks at Evie expectantly, and the brunette feels warmed up when the realization sinks in. But instead of giving Mal the answer she’s expecting, she says, “You must really like those muffins?”

Mal rolls her eyes and shakes her head and her smile is amused when she playfully splashes the water her way.

“You are impossible,” She states after a moment.

Evie feels her heart kickstart against her chest, and she tucks a lock of hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear before she moves so she’s dipping her legs inside the water, her nightgown bunched up over her thighs as she hugs herself and leans forward, her eyes not leaving Mal’s as the blonde watches her silently.

“I’m sorry I didn’t sit next to you,” Evie says softly, afraid that if she spoke any louder she’d break this moment. Mal gives her a tiny smile and shakes her head.

“It’s alright.”

Mal’s still waiting for her to say something in response to her confession, and Evie feels her heart racing against her chest and it’s suddenly difficult for her to meet Mal’s eyes, but she forces herself to not break eye contact with her as she unzips her coat and lets it fall behind her on the steps. She begins to get inside the tub fully, now, and she reacts minimally when she feels the hot water against her skin. It feels nice, and it feels like how she feels inside.

“Uh, you’re coming in in your nightgown.” Mal says, and she sounds amused. Evie licks her lips.

“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

“Right.” Mal chuckles, and then she’s silent when Evie moves closer to her slowly in the water, and then she’s bringing her hands to Evie’s waist when the brunette manages to straddle her legs inside the water and winds her arms around her neck.

Evie’s heart is still racing, and it’s so difficult to meet Mal’s eyes, but she refuses to let herself look away from Mal’s green eyes when this moment between them feels so important.

Mal blinks up at her, and she looks so young. Her hands are still on her waist, and she’s looking up at her with this look in her eyes that makes Evie feel exposed and vulnerable. Mal licks her lips before she says, her voice low and hushed and soft, “I think I have you figured out, and then…”

“And then?” Evie holds her breath, nervous, and waits for Mal to speak. The blonde’s pupils are dilated and she’s looking at Evie like she’s never seen her before.

“And then I don’t know. There’s no one like you, King.” Mal’s voice is vulnerable and soft and nothing like Evie’s ever heard from her before. It makes her breathless.

And then it makes her brave, because she feels a surge of courage rushing through her veins that she’s not quite sure where it comes from, and then she’s leaning her head down and meeting Mal’s lips in a kiss. Mal jumps a little in surprise, but then she’s kissing her back. Mal’s lips are full and soft and sweet as they move against her own, and then Mal’s taking her hand to her hair and it feels so nice that Evie sighs against her lips. She feels Mal everywhere, and she’s overwhelmed but in such a good way – she’s never felt like this before. She never knew she could feel like this.

She moves her hands down Mal’s back and along her spine and the blonde shivers and pulls her closer. Mal’s back is more muscular than she’d imagined, but it’s still soft. It feels nice against her fingertips. She feels Mal’s lips turning up at the corner of her mouth while they kiss, and in between kisses the blonde says, “It’s past curfew. We should go back inside.”

“Uma won’t care,” Evie responds, not moving away, nor wanting to. Mal chuckles against her lips.

“You make an excellent point,” She says, and Evie knows there’s a ‘but’ before Mal even says it, “But Mrs. Merryweather will.”

“I don’t want to go,” Evie says, and then they’re kissing again.

“I don’t want to either, but I don’t want you to get in trouble,” She says finally, and she looks so worried that it makes Evie smile.

Softly, Evie raises her hand up and touches her cheek with the back of it. Mal’s face is smooth and warm, and she’s so beautiful.

They move to stand, and Evie’s immediately shivering. Her nightgown is completely soaked and clinging to her body, and the chilly air of the night above them against her warm skin makes her hug herself with her arms and her teeth begin to clatter.

Mal quickly jumps out of the hot tub and then moves to help Evie step out of it, and then she’s rushing to grab her towel and wrap it around Evie. She starts drying Evie off with the towel, rubbing at her arms and legs, and then when Evie sits down to put on her coat and her boots again after she’s dry enough, Mal begins to dry herself.

Once she’s done, she throws on her bathrobe, and then she’s offering Evie her arm for them to walk back in together.

Before Mal goes to her room and before Evie goes to hers, Mal pulls her into another kiss and then she gives Evie this smile that makes her feel like she’s flying.

//

When Evie steps into the bus the next morning, she’s shy and nervous as she looks for Mal. Her nervousness quickly dissolves into just comfortable warmth when Mal sees her and grins, waving her over to sit next to her.

Evie walks down the aisle towards the middle of the bus and slides into the seat next to Mal, and then she’s turning her attention to the front because she sees Harry stepping inside the bus and sending her a grin when he sees that she’s taken the seat beside Mal. He sends them a wink before he slides into the seat at the front next to Uma, and then a few more people come in after him.

Evie’s about to turn her attention to Mal when CJ steps into the bus and looks right at her and whispers something to her friend from the party that Evie doesn’t remember the name of.

She turns to Mal then and says, “CJ keeps staring at me.”

“It’s because you’re pretty,” Mal grumbles, closing her eyes and shuffling closer to Evie, “Can I use you as a pillow? I’m so tired.”

Evie nods and smiles, and Mal gives her a sleepy grin as she leans over and leans her head on Evie’s shoulder, getting comfortable as she closes her eyes and sets for a nap. Evie leans her head over Mal’s, and then she hears the blonde sighing softly and Mal’s asleep before the bus has even left the ski lodge.

//

Later that morning, when the bus is parked outside their school and Evie’s standing by the vehicle and waiting for the guy in front of her to grab his bag so she can grab hers, CJ approaches her just as she slides her bag out and sets it down so she can put on her coat.

“Hey, Evie,” She greets her with a friendly tone, and Evie’s instantly uneasy when she sees the smile on CJ’s face as she continues, “I just wanted to say that I think it’s so cool that you came on the ski trip. I hope you had fun.”

Evie stops herself from giving her an eye roll in response at the last minute and says, mustering up a fake smile, “Oh, thank you, CJ. I did.”

She’s about to turn around to walk away when CJ speaks up again, “Also, I wanted to say that I think it’s really big of you like, being so understanding about my friendship with Mal.” Her tone is light and she almost sounds genuine, but Evie knows better.

She blinks, “What?”

“Oh, I just mean… a lot of people would be pretty weirded out by their significant others sleeping in someone else’s room, especially their exes’, but… you’re so trusting.” CJ shrugs, and smiles, “I remember that about you from middle school.”

Evie feels her heart and stomach dropping to her feet. She doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t even know what she’s feeling.

CJ doesn’t give her time to process as she continues, taking her hand to her hair and letting her hair fall over her shoulders, “God, doesn’t your hair always get so greasy after spending three hours on the bus?”

Evie knew what she was doing. She understands immediately by the way CJ keeps fiddling with the hair-tie she’d just removed from her hair, understands it by the way she tries to get Evie’s attention on it. To show her that she had the hair tie Mal had taken from her hair months ago when they were walking into Jay’s party, the hair tie she’d told Evie she wouldn’t lose because it was the brunette’s favorite, _her_ hair tie that was now under her possession.

Evie almost doesn’t recognize her voice when she asks, “Where did you get that?”

CJ fakes realization as she looks down at the red and blue scrunchie in her hand, and Evie would almost laugh at the dramatics of it all if she didn’t feel like throwing up when the girl says, “Oh, Mal gave this to me. Isn’t it so cute? I love the colors in it.”

Evie’s silent while she watches CJ sliding her favorite scrunchie on her wrist, and she doesn’t say anything else when CJ gives her one final, satisfied smile and says, “Well, have a nice day.”

Evie stares into space while CJ walks away, that same smile on her face as she does so, and the brunette only really realizes she’s standing in the same place with a frown on her face when Mal approaches her with a smile and says, “Hi, you ready to go?”

Evie doesn’t smile back, “Did you go to CJ’s room last night?”

Mal takes a little too long to answer, and that’s enough for Evie. Eventually, Mal says, “Uh, yeah, but...” she trails off, shaking her head, and Evie thinks she doesn’t even know what she was supposed to say.

“And you gave her my favorite scrunchie?” Evie decides to help her out. Mal frowns, and before she could say anything in response to that, Evie speaks up again, “Am I just a joke to you, Mal?”

“No, no, you’re not. You’re not a joke to me,” Mal hushes out, and she sounds almost nervous, “You just don’t understand the situation, okay?”

“No, I understand completely,” Evie speaks up quickly, not letting her continue. Mal stops, and Evie motions between the two of them, “This is over, in every possible way.”

She begins to turn around to walk away from the blonde, but stops when Mal speaks up, her voice almost desperate, “Hey, can’t we just talk about this? Let me drive you home, I’ll explain everything to you.”

“I would rather walk home,” Evie tells her quietly, and then, “Actually, I would rather drive myself than get into a car with you right now.”

Evie finally manages to walk away, and she feels Mal’s eyes on her back the whole time.

Evie barely makes it out of the school parking lot before her eyes fill with tears.

//

When the brunette steps into her house finally, her eyes now dry and relieved that she’s home at last, she’s instantly taken aback by the Christmas decoration surrounding every corner of the wide space. The room is warm and it looks and _feels_ like home, and Evie’s instantly comforted by that feeling. She lets it wash over her as she sets her bag down and shrugs off her coat, and she’s about to step in further when Dizzy walks in the room from their parents’ home office and grins widely when she sees Evie standing by the coat rack.

“You’re home!” She exclaims happily as she rushes towards her, and before Evie knows it, she’s engulfed in a tight hug. She hugs Dizzy back, feeling even more comforted by her little sister’s scent and her arms around her.

When they pull away, Evie finds that her smile is genuine when she asks, “Did you do this all yourself?”

“Well…” She trails off with a grin, and then she’s looking over Evie’s shoulder and towards the staircase.

Before Evie could turn around, she hears, “Hey, little sister.”

She turns around quickly, then, and finds herself grinning and chuckling happily as her eyes well up in tears, a delighted, “oh my God!” leaving her lips as she rushes forward to him. Ben meets her halfway, and he laughs when Evie all but tackles him in a tight hug. He wraps his arms around her and Evie feels instantly comforted, safe. At ease.

Evie has her eyes squeezed tight, and Ben’s still chuckling when he waves at Dizzy for her to join the hug. Dizzy hugs Evie from behind and rests her head on her back, and Evie almost starts crying again because she’s missed this so much. Ben still feels and smells the same, and his laughter is still the same, and Evie’s missed him so, so much.

She squeezes him tighter and he presses a kiss to the top of her head, his silent way of telling her he’d missed her too.

//

“Tell us about Scotland,” Dizzy says later that night as she rolls the cookie dough in her hands before handing it to Ben and watching him set it on the tray beside them. Evie’s watching them make cookies with a small smile on her face, happy to have her older brother back, especially after the day she’s had.

“Okay, well. Everyone at school is really nice, and even when it’s freezing, they want to go out,” Ben chuckles and continues, “I swear, I’ve seen guys wearing t-shirts and girls wearing short skirts during the coldest nights out ever.”

“Where do you guys go to?” Dizzy asks curiously, and Ben glances at her for a moment before he clears his throat.

“Um, to bars and stuff.” He says, almost embarrassed, and Evie chuckles under her breath because she knows he’s embarrassed to tell their little sister that.

“You go to bars?” Dizzy asks, surprised.

“Everybody does,” Ben says, almost defensively, and Evie chuckles louder now, “It’s not like it’s illegal or anything. Legal drinking age is eighteen over there.”

Dizzy gasps, and she’s clearly being dramatic for show now when she asks, “You drink?” Then, she turns to Evie, “Who is he?”

“Stop it, you.” Evie says, and Dizzy laughs before she turns to Ben and gives him a grin when he realizes Dizzy was making fun of him for being embarrassed to admit to doing things Dizzy knew people his age did. He bumps the side of his body with hers softly, and they chuckle together.

Ben turns his attention to the cookies then, and they’re fine with being in silence for a moment until Dizzy isn’t anymore and she asks softly, tentatively, “Are you gonna invite Audrey over for dinner?”

Ben glances at her and then at Evie and clears his throat before he says, offering Dizzy a small smile, “Why don’t we just make it a family night? Just us.”

Dizzy smiles, and then she turns to Evie and says, “Guess that means you can’t invite Mal.”

Evie subtly shakes her head to Dizzy, as if silently begging her to keep it to herself, but the damage is done. Ben’s tone is curious and interested when he asks, “Mal?”

Dizzy gives Evie an apologetic look and Evie turns her eyes to Ben to find him giving her one of his grins. Before he could question her any further, there’s a knock on the door, and Evie’s standing up quickly and saying, “I’d better go get that.”

Ben’s watching her with curious eyes while Dizzy gives her a nervous smile, and then she’s excusing herself and walking towards the front door. When she opens it, she finds Mal standing on her front porch with a serious look on her face and her hands tucked into her jacket’s pockets, and the blonde doesn’t give her any time to question what she was doing there before she says, “Hey. We need to talk.”

Evie looks over her shoulder towards the kitchen and then turns back to Mal and shakes her head, “Not here.”

She steps outside and closes the door behind her, and she hears Mal trailing behind her as she makes her way down the steps of her front porch. Before she could say anything, Mal begins, “Just so you know, nothing happened between me and CJ last night.”

Evie doesn’t care, “What happened was you went to her room in the first place.”

Doesn’t Mal get it?

Mal sighs, and her eyes are staring deep into Evie’s when she says, her tone low, as if begging Evie to understand, “Look, CJ and I dated for a long time, okay? Those feelings aren’t just going to go away. We have history. I thought you knew that.”

Evie knows what Mal’s referring to. She remembers their conversation from way back when, when this whole situation was just beginning. But it’s still not enough, and she says, “I’m tired of being second best or… or fake best, I don’t know.”

“No, no, you don’t get it,” Mal says quickly, and her eyes haven’t left Evie’s when she begins, “Last night was -“

“Last night was a mistake.” Evie interrupts her.

Mal finally breaks eye contact, then, and Evie thinks she looks hurt when she looks down at her shoes. But Evie doesn’t care – she’s hurt, too, and she thought she meant something for Mal. She thought that last night had meant something for the blonde. She thought that she was enough.

“Physical stuff might not be a big deal to you, but to me, it is.” Evie tells her, and Mal snaps her head up and when she speaks up, her voice is louder.

“Who says it’s not a big deal to me?”

“Says your actions, Mal!” Evie snaps, beginning to lose her patience. She doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. She doesn’t want to look at Mal anymore, because it hurts. “You say you’re over CJ and that you like me and want to be with me, but then you just go ahead and go to her room after we…” She trails off, and she begins to feel the prickling sensation in her eyes. She folds her arms against her chest and watches as Mal shakes her head, looking close to tears herself.

“Okay, look, I…” Mal tries again, but Evie shakes her head.

“Just leave, Mal.” She’s tired. Exhausted.

“Can we just go inside and talk about this?” Mal sounds almost desperate now.

Before Evie could answer her, a voice comes from behind her and she turns her head to find Audrey walking in their direction, her hands tucked in her own jacket’s pockets, “She asked you to leave, Mal.”

Evie doesn’t need this right now, “Audrey, it’s fine. I’m fine. Go back inside.”

Audrey meets her eyes, and she thinks she’s about to say something when Mal snaps, “No, no, no, are you serious right now?”

Evie glances nervously from Audrey to Mal, and she finds Mal frowning at her, a hard look in her eyes as she says, her tone just as hard as the look in her eyes, “This isn’t about CJ and me at all, this is about you and Audrey. Are you kidding me?” Her voice is getting louder by the second, and Evie’s terrified of what might happen if she continues. She tries to interrupt Mal, giving her a panicked look, because if Mal continues Ben might hear them from inside. Audrey’s looking at Mal with a frown, and the blonde gives them an incredulous, bitter laugh and continues, tone hard as ever and even louder than before, “This is the reason that you broke up with me? You’re still in love with _Audrey_?”

None of them notice it when the front door opens and Ben and Dizzy step outside quietly, having heard the loud voices from inside and wanting to check up on their sister.

Audrey’s tone is hard when she steps forward and says, “Mal, you should leave. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know what I’m talking about?” Mal asks, incredulously, and she gives Audrey a look that’s filled with venom when she says, “Evie’s been in love with you this whole time and still has the nerve to give me shit about CJ.”

Evie thinks that Mal’s being blinded by her anger and misplacing the blame on the reason why they broke up, but then she thinks that maybe Mal’s been thinking this and holding this inside for a while and now she’s letting it all out. Either way, she didn’t know that Mal felt like that about her relationship with Audrey.

She doesn’t get to process this any further because then Ben is speaking up from the porch, “You’re in love with Audrey?”

Evie snaps her head up and notices him for the first time, then, and she feels all the air leaving her lungs when she sees the hurt look in his eyes and Dizzy looking up at him in concern.

“Ben, I…” She trails off, and she begins to make her way towards him. She doesn’t care about Mal or Audrey now. She cares about him, and about how she’s managed to do exactly what she’d been trying so hard not to do. She’d hurt him, and the look in his eyes feels like a stab when he shakes his head at her and walks back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

She stares at the closed door for a moment, and when she feels the tears start to fall freely down her face she turns around and finds Audrey and Mal looking at her with concerned looks on their faces. Mal looks a mix of concerned and guilty and tired, and Audrey looks a mix of concerned and sad.

Evie exhales and turns to Mal, and her voice is hard when she says, “Mal, go home.”

Mal doesn’t look like she’s gonna fight her on it, instead, she gives Audrey one last glance before she turns to Evie and says, her voice hoarse and tired, “God, you were never second best.”

She doesn’t wait for Evie to react to that, instead she tucks her hands back in her jacket’s pockets and turns around, walking towards her car to finally leave.

Evie watches her leave in silence, and Mal doesn’t look back at her when she jumps into her car. The tears are falling freely down Evie’s face as she crosses her arms over her chest, and she feels Dizzy’s eyes on her back and Audrey’s eyes on her.

“Evie, I’m so sorry,” Audrey begins to say as she steps forward, “I didn’t know Ben was home. I didn't know this would happen –“

“It’s okay,” Evie speaks hoarsely, shaking her head and giving her a small, sad smile, “It’s not your fault.”

“But –“ She stops when Evie gives her a look, and then she sighs, her brown eyes so sad and concerned and Evie hates herself for putting her in this situation, “I didn’t know he was home yet.”

“He finished his exams early,” Evie tells her quietly, “It was a surprise.”

Audrey nods slowly, and then she says, “Should I… do you want me to talk to him?”

Evie shakes her head, “No, thank you. I… I should do that myself.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Audrey asks her, and Evie shrugs. She doesn’t know.

Audrey nods, and before she turns away to leave, she says, “Talk to me soon, okay?”

Evie nods, still sniffling, and she stands in her porch as she hears the car engine turning over as Mal finally begins to drive away and Audrey walks back to her house.

//

Evie spends the next day holed up in her room, not necessarily feeling like interacting with anyone else ever again. She thanks God that it’s winter break and she gets to stay home, on her bed, for as long as possible and wallow in peace.

Belle and Adam had tried to get her out of her room a few times as the hours went by, but after the tenth time that Evie had declined their propositions of doing something together, they’d left her alone.

Evie can’t help but blame herself for all of his. If she had been honest, if she’d talked to Ben before, if she’d kept Mal up to date on her situation with Audrey, if she’d talked to Audrey more openly, if she hadn’t written those letters, if she wasn’t so scared – _if, if, if._

She turns over on her bed and feels a tear sliding down her face again, and she groans. She’s tired of crying. Her eyes zero in on the numerous books sitting on her shelves in the corner of her room, and she makes up her mind. Maybe it’s a hasty decision, maybe she won’t go through with it, but it’s a distraction and it’s easy to put the blame on them, so she stands from her bed and walks into her closet, quickly finding one of the empty boxes that hadn’t been used a few months ago when she cleaned some of her stuff to send to Goodwill, and she sets it down on the floor in front of her shelf and begins picking up her books one by one and throwing them carelessly inside the box.

She knows she probably won’t give them away. She knows she’ll just leave them inside that box for a while until she’s feeling better, but it feels almost therapeutic to cast her anger at herself out on the books that she thinks made her romanticize everything to the point she’d been put in this situation at all.

Once that’s done and her shelves are empty, she kicks the box until it’s in her closet, and she hides it in the corner, covered by her coats and dresses and away from her view. She doesn’t want to look at them for now.

The next thing she does is walk towards her desk and skims her eyes over the white wooden surface until she finds what she’d been looking for. Inside her pencil cup, she finds the folded piece of paper she’d put away months before, and fishes it out of it and unfolds it.

She stares at the contract for a moment before she rips the paper in tiny pieces, exhaling a relieved breath as she does so. At least the worst is over.

All she had to do now was deal with the aftermath.

Just as she thinks this, her phone beeps signaling she’d just gotten a new text message, and she unlocks her phone to find that Harry had texted her a video. Thinking nothing of it, used to having the boy text her random things he’d seen on the internet and thinking she could use the distraction, she clicks it open, and almost immediately she feels her stomach drop to her feet and her heartbeat in her throat.

Evie knows what the video is almost immediately, recognizing the blue light from the hot tub and the darkly lit scenery around it, and then there’s another beep as Harry texts her again, letters in all caps asking if that was her with Mal.

It is. It’s her, and it’s Mal, and it’s the moment in between them that Evie had thought meant everything and it hurts so much to remember now. But it’s their moment through someone else’s eyes – through someone else’s phone camera. Someone had been there. Someone had seen them – had filmed them, and apparently had shared that video with everyone else.

Harry keeps texting her, saying he’ll take care of it, that he’ll find out who did it, asking if she’s okay, and Evie turns her sound off as she stares at the video, getting easily irritated by the incessant beeping. She knows that Harry means well, and she loves him for caring so much, but she needs a moment to process this.

By the angle that the video was taken, Evie thinks that the person who filmed it knew what they were doing; from that angle, it looks like Mal’s undressed under Evie, even though Evie knows otherwise. She knows what people are going to think, what they’re going to say.

She doesn’t text Harry back, and she doesn’t scream or do anything else. Instead, she rushes to the only person she could think of going to for this.

Ben glances at her from where he’s sitting on his bed folding his clothes when Evie knocks on his door. He quickly adverts his eyes, though, and says quietly, “I’m kinda busy.”

If Evie hadn’t been so desperate, she would’ve been hurt by the tone in his voice and by having her older brother dismiss her, but instead she says, “Please, Ben, I need your help.”

Ben seems to notice the urgent look she’s giving her then, because he frowns and looks at her in concern, “Are you alright?”

Evie doesn’t answer, instead, she nods towards her room as if silently asking him to follow her. He sighs and stands from his bed, and Evie turns to make her way back into her room where she’d left her phone on top of her desk. She hears Ben following after her, and then she hears him closing the door behind him, seemingly catching on to the fact that Evie didn’t want anyone else from their family to hear what she was about to tell him.

He sits down on her bed and waits for Evie to speak up. She doesn’t. She picks up her phone from her desk and opens the video – a video that Harry had just told her had been posted on Instagram by an anonymous account - and hands her phone to Ben.

He raises his eyebrows in surprise and his eyes widen when he first sees it, and then he’s frowning, “Who did this?”

“I don’t know,” She shrugs.

“Have they tagged you?” He asks, and Evie can see that the wheels are turning in his head as he thinks about a way to help her with this.

“I don’t think so,” She tells him, and Ben nods.

“Okay. You’re completely covered up, and we can only see your back. So if you haven’t been tagged, it could be anybody. Now, Mal, on the other hand…” Ben trails off, and he looks concerned. Evie groans.

“God, how could I let this happen?” She asks more to herself than to him as she throws herself on the bed beside him, “I’m so stupid.”

Ben wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him, “Hey, you’re not stupid. We’re gonna fix this.”

Evie stares at the floor when she says, “I know you’re only being nice to me because I accidentally made a sex tape and you feel bad.”

Ben shakes his head and Evie looks up to find him looking at her with a serious look in his eyes, “I do feel bad for you, but I also don’t understand why you didn’t tell me that all this was happening in the first place.”

There’s hurt in his tone and Evie can’t stand it, “’Cause I thought you were going to hate me.”

Ben gives her an incredulous and almost offended look, “I could never hate you, Evie,” He says, and when Evie looks down, embarrassed, he continues, “But when I heard what Mal said, I thought… I thought you were like… trying to date Audrey now or something.”

“How could you think I would ever do that to you?” Evie asks with a frown, and Ben looks down, embarrassed, “You’re my brother.”

Ben shrugs and meets her eyes, and Evie almost cries when she sees the hurt in them, “You wouldn’t even talk to me anymore, what am I supposed to think?”

Evie looks down. Ben had a point. Evie had been so keen on avoiding Ben and Audrey and everything and anything that had to do with them that she hadn’t really thought about the implications her behavior would have to either of them.

Evie shakes her head at herself and turns her attention back to her brother, “I wouldn’t talk with you because I was lying to every single person in my life and I knew I couldn’t lie to you.”

“I just thought you didn’t need me anymore,” Ben admits in a small, uncertain voice, and Evie gives him a watery chuckle.

“Are you kidding me? Look what happened when you were gone!” Evie exclaims, “I made a sex tape, and I haven’t even had sex!”

Ben chuckles and pulls her closer to him as they laugh quietly together. Evie closes her eyes as she rests her head on his shoulder, and then Evie feels eyes on them and looks up to find Dizzy lingering in her doorway, her hand on the doorknob as she watches them.

“How long have you been there?” Evie asks, amused.

“Not long…” Dizzy answers with a tiny smile, and then she shrugs, “Long.”

Evie and Ben chuckle, and Ben waves her over with a smile. Dizzy grins and walks in further into Evie’s room and sits down on the bed beside Ben, and the boy pulls her to him as he hugs them both.

“Okay, let’s make a pact,” He says, “No more secrets between us, okay?”

Evie nods, and then Dizzy bites her lip nervously.

“But…” Her older siblings look at her curiously, and she continues, her voice small and nervous and very unlike her, “I have a secret, too.”

They look at her curiously, and Dizzy hushes out, avoiding Evie’s eyes as she does so, “I sent the letters.”

A beat passes, and then Evie says quietly and calmly, “I’m gonna kill you.”

That’s all the warning she needs, and the minute she stands to run away is the moment Evie jumps from her bed to run after her, and then Ben’s following her and grabbing her from the waist, and Dizzy’s literally throwing herself on the other side of Evie’s bed and hiding herself behind her desk chair as Ben holds Evie back with both of his arms. Evie’s yelling at him to let her go at the same time as he’s telling her that Dizzy’s their little sister, and then Dizzy’s yelling from behind the chair that, “You were just so lonely and I could tell Mal liked you and I knew you wouldn’t do anything about it –“

Ben’s standing in between the chair and Evie now, his hand on Evie’s shoulders, literally holding her back, “So you sent all of them?”

“I thought it’d be better odds!” Dizzy stands from where she’s crouching down behind her chair and makes a run for her closet, and Evie side-steps Ben by jumping on her bed and the boy grabs her by the hips and throws her over his shoulder just in time for Dizzy to close the door of Evie’s closet behind her and lock the door so her older sister wouldn’t come in. Ben sets her down and Evie rushes to her door, but her brother manages to make it before her so he’s now standing against the door and between Evie and the closet.

Ben’s out of breath when he begins, “Look, her logic was off, but her heart was in the right place.”

“Her face is gonna be in the wrong place!” Evie says before she makes to side step Ben, and he holds her back again.

“Before you murder our sister, could I just ask you one question?” When Evie doesn’t say anything and only looks away as she crosses her arms against her chest, he continues, “If you didn’t want those letters to be sent, why did you address them?”

Ben has a point there, but Evie’s not about to let him have that. She grumbles, “It’s not like I added a stamp.”

Ben’s voice is gentle but still pointed when he says, “Can you admit that at least some part of you doesn’t want everything in your life to be a fantasy?”

“…Maybe...”

“So… If I can forgive you for writing my girlfriend a love letter,” He says slowly, and then he turns when he hears the door behind him opening just a creak as Dizzy pokes her head out, “do you think you could forgive Dizzy for sending them?”

Evie looks at his expectant face for a moment before she turns to Dizzy’s head behind him, “You owe me big time for the rest of your life.”

Dizzy and Ben let out relieved breaths, and Dizzy says, opening the door wider, “Thank God, I was really hoping to make it to my first Homecoming.”

That reminds Evie of something, and she squints at her little sister, making the younger girl take a step back and towards the closet again.

She knew Dizzy knew she had no interest in boys. She remembers telling Dizzy she was a lesbian. Then why the hell…

“Dizzy, why did you send Carlos his letter if your plan was to get me someone to date?”

Ben frowns down at Dizzy, curious himself, and Dizzy steps further into the closet and begins to close the door as she says, “I just thought it’d be funny.”

When Evie is ready to run after her again and Dizzy shrieks and slams the door closed, Ben holds her back with a sigh.

“It’s good to be home.” He mutters, more to himself than to them.

//

Knowing her hot tub escapades had gone viral kind of put a damp in her Christmas spirit, but it helped to know that she and Ben were okay and that the boy had gone out to dinner with Audrey one night earlier that week. She hadn’t had her own conversation with Audrey yet, and she didn’t know exactly how that one was gonna go, but she felt better about it now that Ben knew what had been going on and now that she knew that he and Audrey were okay.

On Christmas day, after they had exchanged their presents in the morning and spent some time with their parents, the three siblings make their way upstairs and towards Evie’s room after Ben tells her that he’d figured out a way to help her with her viral problem.

“Okay, so, I asked mom about it,” When Evie makes a face, he raises his hands at her for her to wait, “Don’t worry, I just told her I was asking her as a favor to a friend and she seemed to buy it. I couldn’t not ask her, this kinda stuff literally falls on her area of work,” He says, and Evie nods. Ben had a point, as always. He continues, “Turns out, because you’re both under eighteen, the video falls under child pornography laws. So, all we’d really have to do is report it and then e-mail Instagram for them to have the video taken down.”

“And that works?”

“I figured it was worth a shot, so I e-mailed them last night,” Ben says, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen and opening his e-mail app, “And then I woke up today with this e-mail.”

He hands Evie his phone, and she runs her eyes through the e-mail that tells her that the video had been taken down from their website. Evie grins, and Ben says, “You’re officially PG-13 again, merry Christmas.”

-

Later that night, when she’s sitting at the dinner table with Dizzy by her side and Ben across from them as they wait for their parents to have dinner, Evie’s phone chimes with a new notification and she smiles down at the text message from Harry wishing her a merry Christmas. She texts him back from her lockscreen, and then when she presses send she watches as the notification disappears and then stares at the picture she’d set as her lockscreen a few weeks ago.

The picture is of her and Mal cuddled up together on the couch of Jay’s house, during one of the countless Friday night parties that he’d thrown and Mal had forced – but had she really forced her? – to go. Uma had taken that photo and texted them it, and Mal had told her to make it her lockscreen with a small smile on her face. The picture brings a sad smile to Evie’s face as she looks at it now, and when she looks up after shutting her screen off she finds Ben and Dizzy watching her silently.

“Guess I should change my lockscreen now, huh?” She tries to joke, but her voice is sad.

“You could,” Ben shrugs, “Or you could just talk to her.”

Evie bites her lip and she’s silent until her parents come into the room, ready for dinner.

//

Evie decides to clean her room on the very first day of the New Year. A blank slate. A new beginning.

(But really – she guesses that her life was messy enough, and her room was beginning to bring her down. She couldn’t magically fix everything wrong in her life and could never clean up the mess she’s managed to make with only a snap of her fingers, as much as she wanted to. But she _could_ clean her room.)

She’s finding so many things she didn’t remember she had – so many clothes, and accessories, and magazines and books – that it actually ends up being a good distraction. She’s so into her own New Year’s cleaning – as she dubbed it in her head – that she doesn’t notice the hours passing by.

She only really realizes she’s managed to clean her entire room when there’s a knock on her door and her father peeks into her room, knocking on the door twice as he does so, and Evie looks up at him to find him giving her a small smile.

“Your room looks nice,” He says as a greeting, and Evie gives him a smile in response. “You think you can go on a drive with your old man?”

Evie nods and throws the pillow she’d been fluffing on top of her bed and picks up her coat, turning off the lights before she follows her father down the stairs and then out of the house.

-

“There it is, right there,” Adam points to one of the songs listed in the small jukebox on top of one of the tables at Evie’s favorite coffee shop, and Evie watches as he presses on the button after inserting the coin, and she waits. Soon, _Everybody Wants to Rule the World_ begins to play and Adam and her smile at each other as the familiar intro washes over the place.

“You know, I used to bring you here all the time when you were little,” Adam tells her with a smile, “We’d sit right at this table. You’d sit over there, and I’d be over here. You couldn’t even properly look at me from over the table, you were such a small thing then. A little girl with the thickest eyebrows I’ve ever seen on a toddler,” He chuckles and Evie laughs with him.

“I don’t remember that,” Evie tells him quietly with a small smile on her face.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. You were really young, and you were going through a lot,” He shrugs, “You’d just been brought home to us, and the first time I came with you here was because I could tell you were having a bad day. You were frowning a lot. You seemed to like it here, so I kept coming back with you whenever you’d have a bad day until you didn’t have them anymore. Or, at least, they weren’t so bad that Ben couldn’t help you with it.”

Evie gives him a smile, and he continues as he looks around, “We came here for the first time, and you were quiet, and I didn’t know what I could do to help you. I tried many things, but nothing seemed to work. So I thought music would help,” He looks at the jukebox, “I swear, the minute this song started playing, your frown instantly disappeared and you were smiling. And then when it was over you asked me to play it again. And then again and again until _they_ asked me to stop.”

Evie chuckles along with him, and then he tells her with a smile, “It’s become one of my favorite songs.”

“It’s one of my favorites as well.” Evie says with her own smile, and Adam grins brightly. “Have you been here since?”

Adam shakes his head, “No, not really,” he looks around the room then, and a nostalgic smile appears on his face when he settles his eyes on her again, “but it’s still the same,” then he shakes his head, “well, aside from the fact that I’m closer to my fifties than I’d like to be and you’re way taller than I’d ever imagined that little speck of person would to turn out to be.”

Evie chuckles and looks down at her hands, and Adam continues, “Do you wanna talk about what’s bothering you?”

“Not really.”

Adam nods, and they’re silent for a moment as the song gets to its chorus, and then Adam speaks up again, “Can I just say something then?”

Evie nods, and he starts, “I don’t know what happened with you and Mal…”

She shakes her head, “I don’t wanna talk about Mal,” and then she frowns, “Wait, how did you know about me and Mal?”

“Because I’m not blind, Evie,” He chuckles, and then he continues, “Again, I don’t know what happened with you two, but… I know how you opened up when she was around. I mean, not with us because you’ve always been like that with us, but… just, to the world. You just… allowed the world to see what an incredibly bright girl you are. And that made me really happy, seeing you come alive like that. It reminded me of how you used to be. You looked like you did way back when I used to come with you here and play you this song over and over.”

Evie fees her eyes begin to well up with tears as she stares down at her hands, and her father reaches for her hands and holds them between his own, “Just don’t hide that part of yourself anymore, okay?”

Evie smiles a small, watery smile, and when she looks up at him she finds that he has tears of his own in his eyes behind his glasses. She chuckles, “You big cry baby.”

“You kids turned me soft,” He grumbles with a chuckle, and Evie shakes her head.

“No, mom did. We just made sure you stayed like that.”

Adam chuckles but nods in agreement, and they’re silent as they smile at each other. The song comes to an end, and Evie glances at the jukebox beside them for a second before she turns to her father with a grin, “Can you play that song again, dad? It’s my favorite.”

He grins.

//

“Well, I didn’t hear anything about it today,” Carlos tells her as they make their way down the halls of the school on the first day back from winter break.

Evie glances at him and he gives her a smile that she mirrors, and then Harry speaks up, “Yeah, the scandal with the girl from choir that got knocked up made yer whole ordeal old news.”

Evie nods and then she smiles, feeling like she could breathe easy now, “Okay, so that’s good news, right? I mean, for me. Not for her.”

Harry chuckles and Carlos nods, and then Evie says, thoroughly pleased, “I’m officially back to being invisible.”

Harry smiles and nods when she glances at him, and when she turns to glance at Carlos she finds the boy looking forward with a frown on his face. Following his line of sight, she finds a crowd standing around her locker and frowns.

Pushing past the people, she feels her eyes widening when she sees what they were looking at. On her locker, she finds that someone stuck a picture from the video of her and Mal that had gone viral, and under it they’d written something about how it’s always the ones you never expect. She feels nauseous when she thinks about how many people might’ve passed by that and when she realizes just how many people were standing around her, watching, waiting.

Before she could do or say anything, Harry rips the picture from the locker and crumbles it in his hands and glares at the crowd around them, and Evie pushes past a few of the people so she could make a run for it. She feels Harry following her close behind while Carlos stays behind to begin to erase the words from her locker, and Evie would’ve walked past Mal without noticing the girl if she hadn’t moved to stand on her way, a concerned frown on her face when she notices the look on Evie’s.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mal said, grabbing her arms softly to get Evie to look at her, “What’s going on?”

Evie shrugs her hands off, “You didn’t even say it wasn’t true? You just let everyone think we had sex in the hot tub when you know that we didn’t?” Mal opens her mouth to say something but the words don’t come out, and Evie sees Harry trailing behind Mal, watching them silently, and behind him and Mal, everyone’s eyes are on them, “I bet that you’re just happy that the video leaked.”

Now, Evie knows that she’s not being fair. She knows that Mal’s not the player that everyone thinks her to be, knows that Mal’s not what she pretends to be. She knows that. But she doesn’t care, not at the moment – it’s just easy, and part of her feels good at how easy it is, to let out her frustrations at this whole situation on Mal. And she feels awful about it, but doesn’t apologize, doesn’t turn around to say she’s sorry. She just keeps walking, and walking and walking until Mal’s voice calls out for attention in the middle of the hallway and Evie stops in her tracks and turns around.

She finds Mal standing in the middle of the hallway, the paper that Harry had crumbled now inside her fist, and the look in her eyes is just as hard as her tone when she continues, making eye contact with everyone in the hallway to show that she meant her next words, “Not that it’s anyone’s business, but nothing happened in the hot tub. So if I hear anybody talking about Evie or that video, I’m gonna kick all of your asses, and I think you all are aware that my friends aren’t opposed to backing me up on this.” She pauses, and then, “You understand?”

There’s silence in the hallway, and Mal nods to herself. She hands the paper back to Harry as he tells her “nice job” and tells him to get rid of that, and then she’s following after Evie.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” She says as she runs to keep up with the brunette, and Evie stops and waits for Mal to catch up to her.  When she does, she stands in front of her and her expression is genuinely apologetic when she says, “Look, I am really sorry about everything. If I knew who did this –“

“I know who did it,” Evie interrupts her, frowning, “So should you.”

Mal’s silent for a moment and then she says, her tone quiet, “Yeah, okay, just – let me talk to her, okay?”

“No,” Evie shakes her head, “This is something I have to handle myself.”

She doesn’t wait for Mal to say anything, pushing past her and walking away towards her next class.

//

Later that morning, Evie finds CJ in the bathroom, looking down at the sink as she washes her hands so she doesn’t notice Evie until the girl is standing right next to her, barely giving her any personal space. Evie can smell her perfume from this close, and a part of her remembers Mal mentioning once that she thought CJ’s perfume could get kind of nauseating at times. She finds that she agrees with that assessment now.

CJ glances up at her and scoffs, “Um, personal space much?”

Evie’s not in the mood to play her games today. She glares at the girl in front of her and doesn’t move.

“I know you posted that video.”

“Um, nope. Wasn’t me,” CJ lies, and she steps away from Evie to go dry her hands. Evie trails behind her, “But, just so you know, if you have sex in a public place, you’ve gotta deal with the consequences.”

Evie squints at her, “You know, it’s bad enough if a guy were to do this, but the fact that a girl did? That’s despicable.”

“Yeah, like I said, I didn’t do it.” She tries to side step Evie, but the brunette doesn’t let her. She sighs, and then her whole expression changes into a sickening grin that makes Evie want to recoil, “I’m glad someone did, though. Finally, everyone is gonna see who you really are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mal!” CJ all but shouts, “She’s not as confident as she pretends to be. I’m not as tough as I pretend to be. And you…” She gives Evie an once over, “And you, Evie, you are not as innocent as you pretend to be,” Evie leans back when CJ leans forward and practically yells, “because you kissed the girl that I liked!”  

“CJ, you guys were broken up!”

“No, no, no, before – before we even dated!” CJ’s beginning to sound and look unhinged as she says this, and Evie’s frowning, disbelieving that she’s ever even thought that this girl had it together.

“You… you’re talking about middle school?”

“You knew I liked her and you kissed her anyway!”

Evie always had her suspicions that CJ had stopped talking to her because of that, but to have it confirmed like this, to actually know that CJ was holding a grudge for something so silly for all this time to the point that she’d posted that video to get her revenge – it’s sad.

“It was Spin the Bottle, you psycho, and it was tongueless!” She says anyway.

“Okay, but it wasn’t tongueless to me!” CJ actually screams, and Evie raises her eyebrows in surprise. CJ doesn’t give her any time to respond, though, because then she’s stomping out of the bathroom and slamming the door closed, and Evie finds that she’s actually amused.

She always thought that CJ had it together, and she always thought that no one was paying attention to what she was doing, that the only drama in her life was in her head, but it turns out that she wasn’t as invisible as she thought.

“Huh.” Evie says, and she actually chuckles when she realizes that she’s grinning.

//

“So, Ben left, huh?” Audrey asks from her spot on their family couch. It’s been a while since she’d been inside the Kings’ residence, and Evie watches as she plays with her fingers on her lap for a moment before meeting Evie’s eyes.

“Yeah, this Sunday,” Evie tells her, and they’re quiet for a moment. It’s a little awkward, and they’re both nervous, but Evie’s set on fixing this and getting their friendship back on track, “Hey, thank you for coming over.”

“Yeah, of course,” Audrey smiles.

“I feel like I owe you an explanation,” Evie starts, and Audrey waits, doesn’t deny it. It makes Evie smile as she continues, “See, it was like driving, okay? I could imagine myself doing it, and it was fine, and then I’d get behind the wheel and just completely freeze up. And then I just wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Okay…” Audrey nods slowly, and then she gives Evie an apologetic smile, “I don’t follow.”

“Let me start over,” Evie chuckles, and she shuffles a bit on the couch so she can look at Audrey fully. She tucks her hair behind her ears and exhales, trying to find the words to explain this to Audrey in a way that would make sense, “You were the first girl I ever really liked. Everyone else, the other girls… They were… they were kind of… kind of preparation, I guess? For the realization that I would have when I fell for you. The realization that I…” She trails off, licks her lips, and continues, “That I’m really not interested in boys at all, and that I’m only really interested in girls. And the letters I wrote before to the other girls – and Carlos, but we don’t talk about that – were born out of fantasies. But yours was based off of actually knowing you.” Audrey gives her a small smile, and Evie continues, “And I guess I just didn’t really realize how I truly felt about you until you became Ben’s girlfriend. But over time, that feeling just faded away, and I missed my best friend. And it wasn’t… it wasn’t _love_.”

“Okay, but why didn’t you just tell me that? I feel like I’d have understood.” Audrey sounds genuinely curious when she asks her this, and her tone is soft.

“Well, I couldn’t,” Evie shakes her head with a small smile, “I didn’t know until… Mal.”

Audrey nods, and then she gives her a teasing smile, “Right, Mal.”

“It was real in a different way,” Evie says, her tone above a whisper, “And I’m really sorry.”

“There’s no reason to be sorry,” Audrey tells her, “I think I know where you’re coming from now. It was kind of like it was with Ben and I. Minus all the sexuality related realizations and fake stuff and everything else, really, so maybe it wasn’t really like that at all.” Audrey chuckles, and Evie joins her.

They’re quiet for a second, and it’s nice and comfortable again. It makes Evie brave enough to ask, “Did you stop loving Ben after he broke up with you?”

“No, not at first,” Audrey responds quickly, and then she shrugs as she thinks about it, “At some point it changed, though. The longer he was gone, the more I understood why he ended it.”

Evie nods. She remembers talking to Ben about it, the same night that he’d ended things with Audrey. She was glad that Audrey had come to understand why her brother had done it.

Audrey turns to her, “Do you feel the same way about Mal?”

Evie gives her a small smile, “I know you two don’t exactly like each other.”

Audrey mirrors her smile and allows that before she says, “I liked how she stood up for you today. I mean, she should’ve done it a lot sooner, but then again, she’s a jock, and they’re slow learners.”

Evie chuckles, “Don’t be mean, she was in that video too.”

“Yeah, I know, sorry. Force of habit,” Audrey says, still smiling, and Evie shakes her head at her, “Look, if you miss her, then why don’t you just tell her?”

“I can’t.”

“And why’s that?”

It takes Evie a moment to respond, but when she does, her voice is almost a whisper, “Because if it wasn’t real, then I didn’t lose anyone. But if I say that it was real, and she still doesn’t want me…”

“Then at least you’ll know.” Audrey finishes for her softly, “Evie, you’ve gotta tell people how you feel when you feel it. You can’t just sit in your room writing love letters you’re never gonna send out. I mean, Mal wouldn’t even be in your life if they hadn’t gotten out in the first place.”

“Yeah, you definitely have a point,” Evie says, and then she sighs, “I don’t know. I’m just tired of writing love letters. It’d be nice to be the one receiving them.”

“Evie, I have something for you.” Dizzy’s voice comes from behind her, and her tone is quiet and she looks almost uncertain when Evie turns around to find her standing behind the couch, her blue box that had disappeared mysteriously months ago in her hands.

“Don’t kill me,” She says as she hands her the box, “It’s just… you were always throwing those away, and I thought they were something you should keep.”

Evie opens the lid and finds all of the notes from Mal that she hadn’t really read or paid any mind to when she’d been given them, and she looks up at her little sister, “You saved all these?”

Dizzy smiles and nods, and Evie turns her attention back to the box on her lap. Picking up one of the notes from inside, she unfolds it and reads the words written down in Mal’s handwriting: “Evie, everyone was so impressed by your presentation in Lit, but especially me. I love having a smart fake girlfriend.”

She bites her lip to keep herself from smiling and then moves on to the next one, “It’s so cool how we can talk to each other about real stuff,” and then the next, “You looked so pretty today. I like you in purple.”

“You still think you haven’t gotten a love letter?” Audrey asks her while she reads the words over and over, and she glances up to find Audrey giving her a small smile.

She glances back at Dizzy, who’d been the one to make all of this happen, and her smile is wide when she realizes that she’s made her decision without even noticing it.

She stands from the couch after putting the notes back inside the box and runs upstairs, ready to put her plan in motion while Dizzy and Audrey watch her go with smiles on their faces.

And then next thing she knows, she’s sitting behind the wheel for the first time in actual months, and she takes deep breaths before she puts the key in the ignition and starts the engine.

//

The way from the parking lot after she parks the car and then across the field is familiar and Evie doesn’t have to think too far back to remember why – this had been the same way she’d made months ago, when she’d told Mal that she was in on her little plan.

She knew that she’d find Mal here at this time. She had Mal’s schedule practically memorized at this point, and she finds that she’s slowing down her steps once she begins to see Mal more clearly the closer she gets to the girl.

Mal has her back to her as she pushes the lacrosse goal back, and when it’s in the right place she turns around and then stops in her tracks when she notices Evie approaching her.

“Hey.” She calls to her, and Evie doesn’t need to be able to see her face from up close to know that she has a confused look on her face. Mal has on her school hoodie and jeans and her hair is up, and Evie knows that she was just getting ready to leave after practice.

“Hi,” Evie calls out back, and then she says, “I have to tell you something.”

Mal begins to approach her, “Okay.”

The closer she gets, the more Evie’s courage begins to fizzle out, and she licks her lips before she says, “I drove here,” to stall, and also because she wanted Mal to know that.

“Really?” Mal asks, stopping, and Evie knows that she wasn’t expecting to hear that. Mal tucks her hands in the front pockets of her hoodie and she almost sounds proud when she says, “Wow, that’s… that’s great, congrats.”

They’re in silence then, and Evie begins to feel the courage officially leaving her body. This is a bad idea.

She nods once and says, “Thanks,” and then she begins to turn around to leave.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mal calls out, making her turn back around, and when she does she finds Mal approaching her again with an almost amused smile on her face. The blonde nods towards her hand and asks, “What’s that in your hand?”

Evie tries to hide the piece of paper behind her back as she says, “Oh, it’s um - it’s nothing.”

Mal raises her eyebrows, and then there’s that smirk again when she repeats, “Oh, it’s nothing.”

She’s in front of Evie now, and before Evie has any time to process it, the girl is snatching the paper from her hand. She tries to stop her, but it’s too late – Mal’s holding the paper in her hands, a smile on her face that quickly disappears the longer she stares at it.

Mal gulps, and then she shakes her head, “No, if you want me to read that, then you need to give that to me.”

There’s a look in her eyes when she says this, and Evie takes the paper back and look down on it for a second. She licks her lips and says, “Um… Can you turn around?” When Mal only blinks, she adds, “Please?”

Mal sounds almost amused when she sighs, but she does as asked. Evie looks down at the paper again, and tries to muster up all of her courage back again so she can get through with this.

 _Come on, you drove all the way here,_ her mind is telling her, _you can do this._

She can do this.

She unfolds the paper, and then takes a deep breath and begins, “Dear Mal, I need you to know that…”

Evie stops. She looks at the back of Mal’s head, and exhales. _No. This isn’t right._ She needs to look into Mal’s eyes as she says this.

She taps Mal’s shoulder, and the blonde turns back around and green meets brown. _Yes. This was more like it._

Another deep breath, and then, “I need you to know that I like you, Mal Faery, and not in a fake way. And so I guess… I guess that’s all I came here to say.”

Mal doesn’t say anything as she stares into Evie’s eyes, and the brunette begins to feel the anxiety creeping in again. This is a mistake. This was definitely a mistake. She should just leave. She shouldn’t have come here anyway –

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mal says, grabbing her arm and turning her back around. Evie hadn’t even noticed she had turned to leave, “Don’t I get to say something?”

Evie waits.

“The reason that I went to CJ’s room that night was to tell her that it’s over, because…” Mal trails off, and then she gulps before a smile begins to form on her face as she continues, “because I’m in love with you, Evie. Only you.”

Evie grins, and then she feels her heart beginning to race against her chest, “You’re what?”

Mal’s smile is wide and bright now, and just as she begins to lean forward and stand on her tippy toes to kiss her, a thought strikes Evie’s mind and she stops the blonde from coming any closer, “Wait… How do we do this?”

Mal frowns, confused, “What do you mean?”

Evie has a frown of her own when she says, “Well, what do you put into a contract for a real relationship?”

“Nothing,” Mal responds with a chuckle, “You just gotta… trust.”

Evie smiles and nods, and then Mal’s stepping even closer to her and then she’s asking, a tiny smirk on her face, “You gonna break my heart, King?”

Evie shakes her head minimally before their lips meet in a kiss, and then Mal’s pulling her closer and Evie’s wrapping her arms around the blonde and they’re too busy to say anything else. Everything that was important had been already said.

Evie had always fantasized about falling in love in a field, but –

But she just never thought that it’d be the kind where you played lacrosse.

(Or that it would’ve happened like this.)


End file.
